


time's been kind to you, my love

by Dialux



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Past Abuse, Stark family feels, i'm standing by that statement, i've said i'll quote heather dale for this ship before, sansa stark is a touch-starved little girl who must be protected at all costs, this is essentially 20k of exposition around the idea that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:14:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: Sansa knows her loyalties lie with the Northern independence. Robb might have forgotten her, but she hasn’t forgotten him. Married to Tyrion, beaten by Joffrey- she’s never allowed herself to forget. Sansa has Stark engraved deep into her blood and bone. She’s been a quiet girl for long enough: wolves are protective of their own, after all, and it’s time she lived up to that.[Aged up Jon and Sansa, set in an universe where, on Jon’s fourteenth birthday, Ned tells him his true parentage and Jon goes to Essos instead of the Wall; upon hearing of Sansa’s predicament in King’s Landing, he returns with an army.]





	1. let our battle end

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Written for the prompt Jon x Sansa, marriage of convenience on tumblr; it expanded, and will likely be a total of three chapters.

“Did you ever think about this?” Sansa asks.

It’s not an unwarranted question. With a man she didn’t know, Sansa would likely have acted shy or shrank away; with Jon, who’s seen her run away from Old Nan’s baths stark naked, it feels all too much like an act on top of everything else that’s happened between them.

“Think about what?” Jon asks, brows furrowed. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, all dark shadows and grim surety. Even now, though he’s readying himself for bed, there’s a knife on the stand next to him and a sword flat on the floor.

“This.” Sansa gestures, between them, unwilling to put a voice to what she wants to communicate- there’s something profane in that, she feels; something that shouldn’t ever be said aloud. When Jon still doesn’t answer, she says, tightly, “Marriage.”

“Are you asking if I had any lovers?” He says, sounding amused for the first time since he found her in Maegor’s Holdfast, blood on her hands, hands fisted at her sides, rage thrumming in her veins. “Because I didn’t. Too busy being a sellsword.”

“You didn’t have one night off,” Sansa says, voice incredulous. It isn’t a question, not really.

Jon’s brows pull together at her tone. “I didn’t have a desire.”

Sansa sighs instead of answering, frustrated for reasons that still elude her. She reaches up to undo the laces of her gown- Jon refused the bedding ceremony, voice forbidding enough that even Daenerys didn’t comment on it- so Sansa has to remove the clothes by herself. 

The rasp of wool over her hips as the gown falls, leaving her only in her shift, is loud. When she steps out of the puddle and folds it neatly, flat over a chair, the silk’s drag over her skin seems to hiss out: _liar._  

She bites back another sigh, but the truth of that statement still sinks into her gut. Sansa knows exactly why she’s angry.

Her father is dead. Arya has disappeared into King’s Landing’s alleys; Sansa isn’t sure if she ought to worry for her sister or be glad Arya isn’t here, with her, imprisoned by the Lannisters. Robb’s fighting a losing war in the Riverlands, Winterfell is burned, and Jon has the gall to return after years in Essos, an army and three dragons at his back as if that _excuses_ anything.

Sansa’s met Daenerys Targaryen. She likes the woman rather a lot- Daenerys is strangely likable, for a woman who threatened to set Sansa’s brother afire. She’s the reason for this marriage at all; she wanted a union between her blood and the Starks.

At first, everyone had thought she would marry Robb- until Sansa realized why they were so set on such a match: if Robb married Daenerys, he wouldn’t be able to rule the North, thus bringing the North back into the fold. Daenerys had kept that particular reason far from Jon’s ears, and Sansa had taken full advantage.

It hadn’t been easy, perhaps, to convince Jon of the need for their marriage, but Sansa’s spent years in the south, under Cersei’s thumb, unwillingly married and used. The only difference between this marriage and her previous one to Tyrion is that here, she sold herself off instead off letting Tywin Lannister do it.

All of this might have been forgivable, but Jon- he acts as if he’s come back for her. The boy Sansa’d once known had never been able to lie. This man is not the boy who’d laughed with Arya in the godswood. This man is a man who rides a dragon, a man who leads an army, a man stupid enough to look Sansa in the eye and tell her that she’s the reason he returned to Westeros.

_As if I could’ve believed that. As if I was foolish enough to believe that._

“What are you doing?”

Sansa turns, eyebrows already half-lifted, mocking, the mask painted over her heartbreak. “Getting ready.”

“For what?”

“You cannot possibly _not_ know,” she tells him flatly.

His brows pull together further, and then Jon stills, realization flooding his eyes; face shifting into a look that makes her uneasy. There’s pity there, she’s sure; grief and anger, too, but the pity is what makes rage flare in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m not going to do anything you don’t want,” Jon says, quiet.

Sansa just barely stops herself from baring her teeth. _This whole marriage is unwanted._ “You have to bed me. If anyone has cause to doubt it, you know what will happen.”

“She won’t annul it.” Jon sighs, as if exasperated. “Dany’s not going to annul our marriage simply because I don’t bed you tonight, Sansa. She’s not a monster.”

“Tonight, tomorrow, the day after,” Sansa says, voice low- because if it gets louder she’ll start to scream, and that isn’t going to help anyone, “it matters little. And you might be blind to your _aunt’s_ faults, but she’s burned people before, and she’s threatened to do the same to _my_ brother, so you’ll excuse me for trying to avert such an occurrence.” She undoes the laces with one last, decisive tug, rage propelling her that last step; then she seats herself, naked, back stiff against the headboard, and waits for Jon to say something.

Jon- who’s gaping at her, eyes wide and disbelieving, as if she’s actually hurt him.

“You think-” he sputters. “You think she’ll hurt Robb?”

_I know it. If Robb doesn’t marry her, if he’s as obstinate as he was before- she’ll do it._

Sansa knows her loyalties lie with the Northern independence. Robb might have forgotten her, but she hasn’t forgotten him. Married to Tyrion, beaten by Joffrey- she’s never allowed herself to forget. Sansa has _Stark_ engraved deep into her blood and bone. She’s been a quiet girl for long enough: wolves are protective of their own, after all, and it’s time she lived up to that.

Her silence is enough of an answer.

Jon exhales, and then shifts, fully facing her, knees pressing onto the coverlet. “Dany’s a good woman,” he says, softly.

“I agree,” Sansa replies.

“Then why-”

“I also think she’s a Targaryen,” she continues, chin tipping up. Jon’s eyes flick down to her breasts before he looks back at her, firmly, the tips of his ears turning red. Sansa ignores him. “I think that I know where my loyalties lie.”

She’s eighteen, alright- in the end, she’s eighteen, and she’s angry, so angry, angry down to her toes and fingers and sometimes even further. Lady died just because she was _there,_ and Sansa has scars down her back that will never fade because she was _there,_ and Robb should have come to save her but he’s chosen to fight in the Riverlands for some reason, and all Sansa has is this lying, lying, _lying_ husband, and she was sure she could make it but-

It’s just-

It’s just been a long four years.

“Is that what this is about?” Jon is asking, laughing just a little. “Sansa-”

_If I am to die, then I will die a Stark. I will die like Father. I’ve done my best._

“Seven years,” she says, quietly, no tears, just rage like a rolling storm cloud. Jon pauses, shoulders tightening. “Seven years, and you return, and you expect me to act like nothing’s _happened?”_

“Sansa-”

“Bran and Rickon are dead.” Jon flinches at the flat delivery, but Sansa doesn’t let him recover. She has no desire to let that happen, not here, not now. “Father’s head was chopped off four years ago. Arya’s been missing for four years. My brothers have been dead for three years. Robb’s been a king for three years. And I have sat here, and I have prayed for someone to come save me, and it’s _you.”_

“So you would’ve preferred to stay under Cersei Lannister?” He asks incredulously. “To be- to be-”

“Beaten,” Sansa says. “You can say it.”

One hand wraps around her ribs, feeling the cool, flat scar under it. It’s one of the few that can be seen from the front.

“Aye.” Jon shakes his head. “You would’ve preferred that, Sansa?”

“With them, I knew that they wished to kill me. With you, I’m not quite as sure of it- but you can’t dismiss the possibility.” She smiles, bitter. “And I’ve heard that burning to death is more painful than beheading.”

“Damn it,” he says, voice dropping to a whisper before it gets steadily louder, until he’s shouting: “Damn it, Sansa! I wouldn’t let them! And Dany wouldn’t burn you! I don’t know where you’ve gotten your ideas from, but-”

“Queen Daenerys Targaryen,” Sansa bites out.

He pauses. “What?”

_“That’s_ who I got it from.”

“What?”

“She told me that if Robb refused to marry her, she would burn him alive.” Sansa bares her teeth. “Not one of her advisors, not one of her servants, not in a letter. She looked me in the eye and said it. Now, tell me-” she leans forwards, eyes fierce on Jon’s, blue on grey, cold and stark and Stark, at the end, “-do you think I ought to take that threat seriously?”

Jon stares at her for a moment longer, and then he rolls off of the bed, buckling the sword around his waist and sliding the numerous weaponry back into the sheaths around his body. Sansa doesn’t move an inch, not until he heads for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To talk,” he says, not turning his head. “Daenerys-”

There’s a flash of pleasure somewhere deep inside of her, selfish and mean, to hear him call his aunt by her full name. But Sansa’s still too savvy, too careful; Jon might trust in Daenerys’ regard, but Sansa cannot.

“Come back,” she says, sighing, irritated.

Jon doesn’t turn around, but he does stop moving. Sansa sighs, again, and gets out of the bed; pulls the robe thrown over one of the chairs around her shoulders and walks over to him.

“Jon,” she says. “Come _back.”_

“If she told you that,” he begins, frustrated.

“She did. And the only thing you can do about it is come back to bed. Nothing you say will change it.”

His jaw clenches. Sansa breathes in, short, shallow, soundless, and reaches out, the very tips of her fingers rubbing against his wrist.

It’s the first touch she’s initiated in four years. The feel of Jon’s skin against her own is startling; she feels warmth flush through her at the softness of his skin. Her breath catches in her lungs for just a moment, but the gasp is loud in her ears.

“Sansa,” he says. _“Sansa.”_

_What do you want from me?_ She wonders; but Sansa knows, knows it like she knows a sword to the back, knows it like she knows her father is dead and her brother’s chosen a kingdom over her life. _I have so little left._

“I swore I wouldn’t hurt you,” Jon whispers, eyes caught on the curve of her fingers along his wrist. She can feel the beat of his heart. “Sansa, I swore to protect you. I have to-”

She reaches up, those same fingers that touched Jon’s wrist, and presses them to his lips. Sansa’d just wanted him to shut up, but she realizes, too late, the position she’s standing in: two fingers pressed against his lips, so close to him that she can feel the heat radiating from his bones.

It reminds her of how it felt, the night that he burst into her rooms. Sansa had blood staining her hands, staining her hair and gown and heart, too. She’d looked at a black-curled shadow and let her knife fall. Through her tears, she’d seen a man enter, tall, broad-shouldered, and she’d thought, _Father._

Jon had picked her up, taken her to another room, called for a bath and for a maester to see to her wounds- had she not had her jaw clenched tight, terrified of trembling apart, Sansa might have been able to tell them that none of the wounds were her own.

But she hadn’t.

He’d knelt next to her, head bowed over her hand, and he’d sworn to keep her safe. He’d run his hands over her hair. He’d cried, too, when he saw the pale lines marring her back.

“I came back for you,” he’d whispered, and Sansa had believed him, entirely, without reservation.

She fell asleep, after that; when she woke the next morning, he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Sansa had dressed, braided her hair, walked out into this new, Targaryen-castle; she’d tried to search for him. When she finally found him, he was speaking to Daenerys.

That true, honest affection, laden in his voice and his laughter- Sansa had last seen him like that with Arya.

It was then that she realized that he hadn’t returned for her.

No; Jon had returned to Westeros for his aunt, who wished to claim the Iron Throne. Jon had returned, perhaps, in part, for the family he’d left behind; but mostly it was for the sake of this pale-haired queen.

Sansa could forgive many, many things.

She couldn’t forgive this lie.

But now, looking up at him, she wonders if she hasn’t been the slightest bit cruel to him, as well. Sansa’s the first Stark he’s seen in years, and she’s avoided him for weeks. She’s refused to talk to him about her father or Arya, levelled glares when he pushed- she’s been cold, and reticent, and the quiet resentment has built up on both their sides.

“Please,” she says, and that finally breaks his resolve.

They return to the bed, sitting on one side instead of lying down- Sansa keeps one hand on his wrist, afraid that if she let’s go he’ll flee. The candlelight casts his face in shadows, but it paints the arc of his cheek a liquid gold. She exhales, a little shakily.

“You’ve been angry,” Jon says lowly, when Sansa keeps silent. “Ever since I came here. And I don’t know _why.”_

“Yes,” says Sansa. “You do.”

He pauses, and then something erupts out of his throat, vibrating from deep inside his chest. It might have been a laugh had it not been so bitter.

“It isn’t me you’re angry at.”

“Jon,” she sighs.

“Or, it is.” He looks at her, then away, just as fast. “But not because I came here. For something else.” Jon’s jaw works, and Sansa bows her head, lets the hand not gripping his wrist to cross her ribs, to rest two fingers over the silk covering the scar-smooth hollow there.

“You lied,” she whispers.

“When?”

“That night. The first night.” Sansa feels the sting of nails against her scar, muffled through silk, the small pain grounding her. “You told me you came back for me.”

“I did,” he says.

“You came back for Daenerys’ throne,” Sansa says wearily. “You came back riding on a dragon she hatched, with an army that belongs to her. You came back for _her,_ and you’ve spent every day since you walked into King’s Landing lying to me about why you did it.”

Jon shifts, so he’s seated more fully on the bed and is facing Sansa head-on. His voice is soft, or at least softer, when he says, “If I came back by myself, do you think I would’ve been able to save you?”

“You could’ve gone to Robb.”

“I could have,” he agrees. “But, Sansa- Robb has an army. He’s fighting, aye, that’s true enough; but he has an army, and he has your mother, and he has the support of the North.” His eyes are large and grey and painfully earnest. Sansa can’t unsee it now: the boy she’d once known, the boy she’d once called brother. “You had none of it.”

He reaches forwards, placing his free hand over the hand holding his wrist.

Sansa tries to swallow past the lump in her throat.

“If I wished to save you, I needed an army. And…” he falters, before pushing on. “-and, you know, Dany didn’t want to return so quickly. She wanted to wait, to let the Lannisters weaken themselves further.”

“You persuaded her,” Sansa says, voice scraping high and thin.

Jon’s eyes darken. “The rumors of King Joffrey- of how he treated you- I couldn’t believe them, not at first. And then I came here, and I realized how much worse it was.”

“It wasn’t so bad after I married Tyrion,” Sansa says.

The corollary: it had, once, been _worse._

“You were catatonic,” Jon says roughly. “That night. The first night. Nobody would tell me where you were, and by the time I found you, you were screaming. Crying. You didn’t know who I _was,_ Sansa.”

She doesn’t remember this. She remembers the way Cersei’s eyes had flashed, the ache when one of the gold-plated guards dragged her out by her hair, the give of his throat under a knife she took from his own waist- but she cannot remember screaming.

Which might be the entire point.

“I should’ve come earlier,” he finishes, thumb sweeping over her knuckles, sending warmth through her chest.

“I thought you lied,” Sansa confesses softly.

Jon looks back at her, and there’s none of the anger she might have expected, that likely would have been there in any other man’s face. Then he moves closer, hand leaving hers- she has a moment to feel disappointed at it, but only a heartbeat, because then he threads his fingers through her hair and brings himself even closer, gently guiding her to his shoulder.

He’s warm, and he’s solid, and there’s something very, very tender in the way his hand curves over the back of her neck.

And, in the end, Sansa has spent four years all alone.

She lets out a shuddering, gasping sort of a sob, the first truly harsh one that she’s allowed of herself in years, and brings her other arm over his shoulder, digging into it. Sansa can feel his heartbeat, strong under her ear, and though it’s a strange thing, it’s that- that steady, unfaltering drumbeat- that breaks her.

The tears are messy, undignified. Sansa might have felt ashamed, but that feeling’s dissolved for some reason, along with her rage and fear.

Perhaps it’s because Jon’s known her for so long.

Jon doesn’t stop her; he keeps one hand under hers, lets her keep it pinned to the bed. He threads the other through her hair, and hauls her even closer to him, until she can feel the weave of his shirt, rough against the skin bared by the gaping neckline of the robe she’d thrown on so hastily before.

“I should’ve been here, sweetling,” he says, voice low and rasping in her ear.

Sansa shudders at the endearment, curling even closer, plastering herself against him, and he continues to talk: soft words, kind words, gentle words. She feels content, and, for the first time since she realized the danger’s of the world, for the first time since her father died, safe.

By the time the tears fade, she’s loose and pliant in his arms. Jon shifts her over so she’s fully on the bed and pinches out the candles surrounding them, leaving the room in darkness. Sansa hears the clatter of things falling over; after a moment, the bed shakes with his return, and he slides his hand over hers, lacing their fingers together.

“Sleep,” he says, and they do: innocently, for all that it’s their first night as husband and wife.


	2. i'll pretend to know and understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She smiles, then, and it’s a horrifying caricature of the smile she’d offered less than a quarter-hour previous: all harsh, honed, ruthless enamel and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...this is now five chapters.

“My lord? Queen Daenerys is ready.”

Jon’s hands pause in the rhythmic move of sharpening a sword. He nods at the knight who brought the message, waiting for him to leave before turning to Sansa.

It’s been a little over a month since their wedding, and Sansa looks- better. She’s put on some weight, enough to soften the harsh line of her cheekbones, and there’s a set to her shoulders that suggests ease.

She hadn’t looked up when the knight spoke, and she doesn’t look up now.

“Sansa?” Jon asks, struggling to keep his voice gentle.  

“Hmm?”

“I’m leaving.”

Her eyes sweep up that, but there’s none of the panic that he had once expected- though that’s not to imply that fear was ever there. Sansa’s always been singularly good at masking her emotions, and even in those early, horrible weeks, when Jon was still working out what had happened to her, she’d managed to smile at him, steady and unhesitating.

“Yes,” she says, and nothing more.

He rises to his feet, still hesitating. “Is there- is there something you’d like me to tell them?”

“I’ll meet with them in a few days,” Sansa replies, standing as well; she pushes her hair back and extends the cloth she was working on to him. 

Jon takes it and rubs the silk between his fingers. “Want me to give this to your mother?”

“What?” Sansa blinks, thrown. “No. It’s for you.”

Looking at it a little closer, Jon realizes that the direwolf is white as snow, and there’s a single thread of red running through it that suggests Ghost’s eyes- Sansa’s spent many hours bent over cloth, sewing, and he feels warmth burst in his chest at the thought that those long nights were for _him._

“Thank you,” he tells her, and Sansa’s face softens into a smile that looks truly genuine.

“It was my pleasure,” she says. For just a moment, she looks conflicted; then she reaches out and brushes his wrist with her fingers, the same way she’d done on their wedding night. Her eyes are very blue when she looks up at him. “Stay safe,” she murmurs.

He tacks his lips into a smile and nods. “Always,” Jon says, and brings her hand to his lips, kissing it. “You too.”

…

Flying on a dragon’s back is as thrilling as it sounds- it’s dangerous, terrifying, exhilarating in the way only something truly deadly can be. Jon’s loved it from the very moment that he dug his heels into Rhaegal’s scales and tightened his grip on Rhaegal’s spikes, hard enough that he left bruises on his palms; there’s something lovely in leaving the whole of the world behind, in seeing entire cities spread out beneath one’s feet.

But best of all, on a dragon’s back, the world’s worries seem very small.

It’s why he wants to climb atop Rhaegal right away, not answer Dany’s questions or meet her advisors’ suspicious looks.

The dragons are Dany’s children, though. They answer to her, not to him, so he’s grounded until she’s satisfied with him.

“You won’t tell him of our troop movements,” she’s telling him. “You won’t tell your cousin of what’s happened to me in Essos. You won’t give away state secrets-”

“I’ve already proven to obey you,” Jon interrupts.

Jorah, beside her, hisses in displeasure at Jon’s irreverence. It’s a continuing point of irritation between them: Jorah wants Jon to show Dany the respect of a subject to a queen- and Jon continues to ignore him and his resentment with the ease of a person who finds deep amusement in the act.

“I’ve already sworn to you,” Jon continues blithely. “I won’t be telling Robb of anything that doesn’t involve our family, Dany. I assure you, we’ve enough to speak of in these two days.”

They’ll land in Riverrun in a few hours on their dragons, and the rest of their retinue will join them in about two days’ time. Robb awaits them there, according to the ravens he’s sent; he’s returned specially from Pyke for this meeting.

Dany’s face relaxes just a little, wryness replacing the harsh tilt of her mouth, and she nods. “Then we shall fly,” she says.

…

They land on the far side of Riverrun’s courtyard, the dragons’ claws scraping deep furrows in the soil. Dany hesitates, just a little, to dismount- Jon, however, doesn’t pause for even a moment.

He leaps forwards, off Rhaegal’s back, and stops only feet away from Robb to execute a bow. Robb doesn’t let him hold it- he’s stepping forward almost before Jon’s bowing, and then they’re embracing each other.

“Jon,” he says, cries- _“Jon!”_

When he pulls away, Jon studies him. There are differences: Robb’s face is hollowed out, with dark bags under his eyes that look as if he’s been punched twice over. There’s a scar on one jaw that snakes down to his neck, and weary lines carved into his face, and his hair’s no longer as bright as it had once been.

But it’s still _Robb,_ and Jon can hardly breathe for his relief.

“You’ve changed,” Robb mutters, half under his breath.

Jon exhales slowly, stepping away. “So have you,” he says.

Dany coughs delicately behind him, and Jon pauses; then he turns, angling himself so she can see Robb properly.

“Robb,” Jon says, flicking his hand towards her, “may I introduce you to Queen Daenerys?”

There’s amusement in Robb’s eyes as he nods to her. “We’ve all heard of your exploits, Your Grace,” he says. “Please, come into Riverrun and partake of our bread and wine. We look forward to hearing further of your adventures.”

Briefly, there’s silence, as they move across the bridge and enter the castle proper. Before they can walk into the keep, however, a woman steps out of the crowd.

“I must ask,” she says, “after- after my daughter.”

“Mother,” Robb sighs, and it’s only then that Jon recognizes her.

Lady Catelyn has changed. Aged, yes, but also turned harder. Her face has thinned, and her hair has turned even darker than it had been before. Perhaps most obvious, however, is the scar slashing down from either side of her neck, raised and livid against her pale skin.

Rumor has it that Catelyn’s refused to leave Robb’s side after the massacre at the Twins. According to the smallfolk, she always wears gowns with wide collars, the better to display what the Boltons and Freys almost did to her. A lesser woman would have died, they whisper, but Lady Catelyn had only one son to her, and she refused to let him live in the world alone. Some even say she bargained with the Stranger himself for more time.

Now, however, she only looks old and frail, waiting for someone to tell her about her eldest daughter’s fate- to confirm what Jon had promised in his letters.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, she’s on her way. She’ll be here with the rest of the people in two days’ time.”

Catelyn’s shoulders relax fractionally. “Then come inside,” she says, Robb gripping one of her arms, both of them leaning towards each other unconsciously. “Come inside, Your Majesty. This is, indeed, a time to celebrate.”

…

 _“Explain,”_ Jon tells Robb, as soon as they enter his solar. 

The rest of the castle- Dany and Lady Catelyn included- are feasting downstairs, enjoying the bards’ songs. Jon, however, has been all-but-vibrating in his seat, waiting to speak to Robb. It’s been far too long; there’s far too much hanging between them.

“Explain what?”

“Everything.” Jon’s eyes flick to him, and then away, and then back again. “How you survived. What happened. How you went from- from _dead,_ to ruling Pyke. To having an army at all.”

“Ah.” Robb pauses, settling on his seat. “That’s… a long story.”

“I happen to have two days.”

Robb still hesitates, but it isn’t the tentative silence that Sansa has whenever he asks her what happened- this is more thoughtful, one where Robb’s trying to find the words rather than trying to hide the truth.

“I suppose- I suppose it began at the Twins,” says Robb. “The Boltons and Freys- they betrayed us. Arya warned us, though.”

“Arya?” Jon asks, startled. “You know where she is?”

“Aye. She’s alive, Jon.” Robb’s eyes lighten, just a little, sympathy leavening his expression. “She’s close to the Twins, in truth. Her direwolf- Nymeria- leads a large pack, and Arya’s using them to bully the Freys.”

“Oh, gods,” he manages, and lowers himself to rest against the chair, legs quivering. “Oh, gods, I’d no idea. You’re certain?”

“I saw her with my own eyes not a month previous,” Robb affirms. “Arya’s alive and well. She’s also content, I’d say, fucking those Freys over as well as she is.”

Jon laughs, almost helplessly, at the thought. It’s quintessential Arya behavior, and also such a phrase that Robb would say- he’s hearing it, after almost seven years, and it aches in his throat like a swallowed stone.

“And then?” He asks, when he’s gotten himself under better control.

“Right. I- Arya warned us,” Robb continues, slowly. “We almost managed to get out, but they caught us before that. Got in a nasty fight there- Roose Bolton almost took out my eye, and gave me this scar.” He taps the silvery scar curving over his jaw. “Grey Wind got him. Tore his arm off before crushing his head in half. Mother was attacked too- so bad the Freys thought she was dead, there was that much blood. I was half-blind, and Arya thought Mother was dead, but she got us out and dragged us to some nearby cave.”

“And you got better.”

“Shockingly,” he says. “Everyone was sure we were dead. They must have, ‘cause there weren’t any major parties sent out to find us.”

He’d heard of Robb’s death, all those years ago, and he’d almost gone insane in his fury. Dany had kept him locked in his rooms for almost two moons, he’d been so far gone. It took him almost that long to decide that revenge for Robb would have to wait- there was yet one person who lived, one person Jon could save.

Sansa’s saved him, in her own way, just as much as he’s saved her.

Now, he breathes out slowly and lifts an eyebrow at Robb. “Idiots. If you’re going to kill a King, you should at least make sure you do a good job of it. That’s the first thing any assassin learns, isn’t it?”

“The Freys have never boasted intelligence,” Robb replies, a faint smirk on his face before it fades. “Anyhow, after that- we kept quiet. Found a few people around, told them the truth, started robbing some traitorous nobles and passing the gold around for the smallfolk. We heard that there was some trouble among the Greyjoys on how to invade the North, so we met up with Lord Mallister and got some of his ships and invaded the Iron Islands.”

It’s irony at its height: the Starks in Pyke, while the Greyjoys fester in Winterfell.

Jon remembers the breathless hope in his lungs when he heard that a red-haired, sword-crowned man conquered the Iron Islands. Robb had remained dead for almost two years, but when he returned to life, he returned with a _vengeance._ The Riverlands and Vale have rallied to his side, and in less than a year, the faltering forces have almost pushed the Lannisters from the Riverlands’ borders.

Robb shrugs. “Arya found Nymeria a few months ago. She took them about a month ago, up to the Twins. And… I suppose that’s it.”

“’s it true that your mother always goes with you?”

“Yes.” He snorts, shifting to a more comfortable position. “Everywhere. To Pyke and to Lord Mallister and _everywhere._ She right near took a sword to me when she heard that I let Arya go to the Twins. But we’ve all lost too much.” Robb lifts an eyebrow at him.

It’s almost as if he’s asking, quietly, _Haven’t we?_

 _Yes,_ Jon thinks, remembering the screams he still sometimes hears in his dreams, of a helpless Bran and Rickon, of an Arya spitted on the same sword he gave her, of Robb murdered at a wedding. Of Sansa’s own demons, still bitter and destructive and potent, despite seeing her tormentors’ deaths. Of Lady Catelyn’s scars, and Robb’s aches, and all the bloodshed that will never give Ned Stark back.

 _Yes,_ he thinks, _this tragedy has gone for long enough._

…

Two days after they land in Riverrun, the rest of the court rides in.

The majority of these people are unimportant for Robb and Lady Catelyn- in fact, were it a regular retinue, they likely wouldn’t have been there at all. But this isn’t normal, not at all: Sansa’s coming, and they’re seeing her after four long years.

Half of Riverrun is waiting for her arrival with bated breath.

Sansa doesn’t come in at the head, but she’s close. When Jon sees her, he feels his jaw drop- just a little- and hears a high gasp from Lady Catelyn, a hiss from Robb. He cuts his eyes to the side and sees Dany’s thin, pale lips.

She’s unhappy, and it’s clear _why._

For the weeks that Sansa’s been in King’s Landing, she’s always worn dark colors- Targaryen black, with a few decorations in red when necessary. She’d also not let her hair hang free, not even when they slept. It’d always been in a neat braid that coils at the base of her neck, well-hidden away. Seven help him, she’d worn a dark grey gown to their _wedding,_ and Jon had been too worried for her state of mind to refuse her.

But now she wears a gown the pale of Lady’s fur. Her hair falls freely down to the small of her back with just a single small braid pulled back from the front, braided with little white flowers, and she sits her horse as straight-backed and fierce as any conquering queen.

As any princess.

 _I think I know where my loyalties lie,_ she’d said, back on that first night, chin raised obstinately, not-quite-accusation in her eyes. Jon had almost forgotten, but- oh, _gods,_ he knows now what she meant.

He sees movement out of the corner of his eye and he sees Robb- Robb, who’s spent four years fighting a war in the Riverlands against the world; Robb, who’s left her to languish with a prince who beat her in front of his court and a queen with even less sympathy; Robb, who’s Sansa’s elder brother, and whom she’s always loved with an irrevocable sort of force.

Sansa still holds onto her Northern loyalties.

Nobody ever thought of it. Nobody ever even _considered_ it. Sansa always loved the south; she always had little more than quaint interest in Northern customs.

And yet here she is, hair in a style as close to a crown as one can come without an actual crown, in Stark white, eyes blue and wide and fierce. It’s a reminder: she’s no longer a prisoner. Sansa’s a princess, the eldest daughter of House Stark, the next heir to Winterfell.

Judging by the growing silence in the courtyard, everyone knows it.

She dismounts gracefully and approaches Robb, each step sharp, pointed, elegant. There’s a poise to her that runs in her blood, a softer kind than Dany’s but no less strong. When she stops and curtsies, it’s almost as if the courtyard holds its breath, almost as if everyone’s reluctant to break the terribly delicate vision in front of them.

Then Robb steps forwards, his hands wrapping over her shoulders, and lifts her out of the curtsy.

They look at each other for a long moment, and Jon wonders what he’d expected- tears, likely, or at the least exclamations of joy; but Sansa’s spent the past few weeks confounding him, and this isn’t any different.

Her shoulders relax, lowering from their defensive slant. Robb exhales, shakily. The plank-stiff set of her spine softens, and his hands tense, knuckles paling. And then, slowly, achingly slowly, with none of the hesitance or guile of every previous time, Sansa smiles.

It’s quite possibly the loveliest thing Jon’s ever seen in his life.

…

Lady Catelyn joins them not a few heartbeats later, joy shining from her face like starlight on a cloudless, moonless night. It only takes them a few more moments to head further into the keep, but before they disappear into Riverrun’s bowels, Sansa turns, searching the crowd.

When her eyes land on him, she extends a hand- it’s the clearest sign Sansa’s given yet of liking his presence, so Jon doesn’t hesitate.

It’s a good call, overall: Sansa positions him between herself and Robb and her mother, skillfully enough that nobody seems to recognize what she’s done until they’re inside the solar proper. She looks awkward once out of the public gaze, her eyes constantly shifting away from her family and then back; it’s almost as if she can’t look at them too closely.

“Sansa,” Catelyn murmurs, stepping forwards. “Oh, Sansa, my dearest daughter.” When she goes to embrace Sansa, however, Sansa shrinks away- incidentally, further into Jon’s side.

“Mother,” she says, before Catelyn can actually react, “I- I must tell you- before everything else. Before anything else.”

“Yes, sweetling,” says Catelyn. 

Robb, behind them both, is further from the situation. He can see what Catelyn cannot; he sees Jon’s abrupt tension, the way Sansa’s shoulders dip almost to the ground, hunching in on themselves like curled-up wings, and he straightens, eyes watchful.

“Father,” Sansa says, not soft, not at all. This is loud, steadied, a clarion call that makes Jon want to wrap himself around her and shield her from every damn cruelty the world’s forced her to endure. This is unabashed, and though Jon hates it, there’s a stirring of pride in his gut for Sansa. “When he wished Arya and I to leave, I refused. And I went to Queen Cersei, telling her what he planned.”

Catelyn stiffens. Jon does, too, though nowhere near enough for her to notice; she’s too lost in the past, and, anyhow, he’s suspected something along these lines for some time. It’s a surprise, perhaps, but only in the actuality; not in the existence.

“Sansa,” Robb breathes. It’s both a question and not.

“I betrayed him,” Sansa continues, hands fisting at her sides. “I did it. And if I hadn’t, then maybe- maybe Arya would still be alive. Maybe the war-”

“Arya is alive,” Robb interrupts. “She’s alive.”

Sansa breathes in and out, breath raspy. “It’s been three years,” she says quietly. “I think we ought to accept that she might truly be gone, Robb.”

“You’re mistaken.” Robb steps closer, shifting past their mother, and skims a hand over Sansa’s forearm. “I did not mean hope, Sansa. I’ve seen Arya, with my own eyes, not more than a month previous. She is alive. She is- content, in her own fashion.”

There’s a long silence, and then Sansa, quite deliberately, steps away from Jon, from Robb, back straightening, shoulders stiffening, face paling. She keeps her fingers tangled with his, but nothing more.

“When?” She chokes out. 

“At the- the Red Wedding,” Catelyn says softly, hesitating. “She saved us both.”

“Ah,” Sansa mouths.

She is shaking, faint tremors shuddering through her chest. Jon doesn’t dare to step closer to her- Sansa’s made it clear before that unasked touches never make her feel better- but he does try to communicate support in the clench of his fingers.

“So you’ve been with her for three years,” Sansa whispers.

For three years, Sansa’s been abused in innumerable, unnameable ways. It’s been four years since she ever saw her brother or mother. She’s been alone, for so long, and it’s all because Robb left her there.

Once, Jon had been the unwelcome one in Winterfell. Arya had been the one who didn’t quite fit into the shape she ought to. Sansa, however, has always been the one who never belonged to the North.

To her now, it must seem as if the abandonment was purposeful.

“It wasn’t like that,” Robb tells her. “She ran away, Sansa, and came to us. I couldn’t have struck a deal to save either of you-”

“Of course not,” Sansa says, stepping away from Jon fully, a decisive movement towards the door. She smiles, then, and it’s a horrifying caricature of the smile she’d offered less than a quarter-hour previous: all harsh, honed, ruthless enamel and blood. “I wouldn’t have asked it of you anyhow.” She turns to Catelyn. “I find myself tired after the travels. If you could direct me to my chambers, I would be grateful.”

Catelyn nods, though she looks troubled; they both leave silently. Jon watches the way Sansa looks tensed, drawn taut as a bow. She looks worse than she did on their wedding night.

“I didn’t-” Robb turns when the door shuts, his fingers curling into a fist on the desk. There’s old, useless rage in the line of his shoulders. Then he looks at Jon. “The Lannisters- what they did to her- it was bad, wasn’t it?”

Jon hesitates for just a moment- Robb has enough guilt in him to flood Westeros thrice over. But the truth won’t become any more palatable were he to soften his words.

“Worse,” he says. “Worse than the rumors, worse than you’d expect.”

He bends his head, not pausing to see Robb’s reaction, and leaves.


	3. strange, the things we regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Call Jon a fool, call him Targaryen-mad or Stark-tragic or bastard-lustful, but his heart’s been Sansa’s since the moment he landed in King’s Landing, and the very idea that she might offer any of that love back is enough to leave his dilemmas moot.

 Jon seats himself outside Sansa’s room- technically, it’s their room, but he’s fairly certain that Sansa doesn’t know that, and also that she’s distressed enough to miss the signs of his presence in them.

He settles against the floor opposite the door instead of knocking. He’s learned enough to recognize what her crying sounds like- she’s done it before, once, when she thought him deep asleep- but she’d shied away from him then and he’s certain that she’ll do the same now. So Jon pulls out his sword, balances the blade across his knees, and starts to sharpen it.

The metallic zing of the whetstone across his blade seems to rouse her, though, for it’s only a few minutes past him starting that Sansa opens the door. Her eyes sweep over the hallway once, then twice, before catching him. They narrow.

“What’re you doing?”

“Sharpening my sword,” he says, shifting it so she can see it better.

Sansa’s eyes are red-rimmed, and the tear tracks still gleam in the torchlight. It’s strange, Jon reflects; but Sansa manages to turn blotchy cheeks and graceless anger into something ladylike. Somehow, through some strange method, she still manages to look lovely.

“You look ridiculous,” she snaps. “Where’s your bedchamber?”

Jon lifts his eyebrows, tilts his head to the door open behind her, and Sansa flushes in sudden understanding.

“Well, then- come inside. People will talk if they see-”

“This is your family’s private wing,” Jon replies, easily. “It isn’t a problem.”

“The floor cannot possibly be comfortable.”

“I’m fine,” he says bluntly. “You needed- still need, likely- some privacy. Take it. I’ll be here.”

After a long moment, Sansa’s face softens. It’s no longer the exasperated look she’d sported before, nor the heartbroken one before that; there’s affection there, in the gentle swell of her lips, in the crow’s-feet along her eyes. Jon’s called himself a fool countless times: for seeing a flame-haired woman with more strength than was entirely healthy and falling head-over-heels in love with her- and there have been times when he hates himself for putting another man in her way, after so much has already been taken from her by men.

Then there are moments like this, when Sansa looks at him as if she could love him, as if some part of her already does, and he can’t quite stop his heart from quivering with delight.

“Give me a moment,” Sansa tells him, and steps back into the room.

She closes the door, but she doesn’t latch it. Jon shrugs inwardly and returns to sharpening his sword, letting the rhythmic motion lull him. When the door opens again, Sansa leaves it open and walks back inside; Jon waits for a few more beats before rising to his feet and entering.

She’s washed her face, that’s the first thing he realizes- scrubbed the evidence of tears from it. The second thing he notices is the flowers that have been scattered over half the bed and floor, the same ones that had graced her hair not a few moments previous. The third is that Sansa’s wearing a nightgown, not a proper dress, and that she’s at the small vanity, undoing the small braids that had held those flowers.

He keeps the sword and whetstone on the nearest flat surface he can find, moving closer to Sansa.

She looks at him through the reflection in her mirror. “I shouldn’t have overreacted,” she murmurs.

“Not the most common reaction to finding out that your long-lost sister isn’t dead, aye.”

“I _am_ glad,” Sansa says, twisting on the seat to look at Jon. There’s genuine worry in her eyes, as if Jon could ever think Sansa unhappy at such a thought. “I know it wasn’t... I was just startled.” Her lips curl, self-deprecating. “Stupid Sansa, always saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

“Hey,” Jon says, breathes, stepping closer to her, close enough that the soft edges of her nightgown catch on his jerkin, “no, Sansa. None of that, not here.”

Slowly, keeping his eyes locked on hers, trying to see if she'll accept it, he places one hand over the back of her neck, fingers rubbing into the muscle. Almost instantly, Sansa goes boneless in his arms, melting against his back.

It’s one thing he’s learned of her: she craves touch, but only in specific places, only at specific times. When she feels safe enough for it, however, Sansa can be reduced to a pliant, loose-limbed mess within a few moments. Rubbing the back of her neck- it usually leaches the tension from her even quicker than the other spots.

“I’m so glad Arya’s alive,” she whispers, head tipping back against him, body settling fully against his. “So glad. You’ve no idea, Jon, how much of a relief it was to hear.” Sansa turns, then, and reaches up to undo the jerkin’s laces, eyes half-lidded, so easily he almost groans. “But- Robb- he just-” she shakes her head. “I wanted him to save me,” she says, and it’s the plaintive tone to those words that, finally, spurs Jon to draw her up, rest his forehead on hers.

Her hands pause in undoing the jerkin, palms flattened against his chest. Jon wonders if she can feel the thunder of his heart, the rapid bird’s flutter of it.

“I never doubted you loved Arya,” he tells her. They’re close, so close, and Jon can see the water still clinging to her lashes, the way the color fades from the root to the tip, turning bright and shining as gold. “Not even when you fought over the stupidest things. And Robb’s an _idiot,_ Sansa. Someone with a proper head on their shoulders would’ve come for you.”

“I dreamt of it,” she confesses, muffling it into his chest. “Of Robb, marching into King’s Landing on a white horse. Of the stone walls falling, or how Cersei would scream when the sword fell on her neck, or how Joffrey would- would look so afraid. I _wanted_ it, and-”

“And,” Jon finishes for her, softly, “the only person who came was me.”

“Yes,” she says, sighs, before stepping back enough that she can continue to undo the laces. “And I was rather angry about that as well, you know.”

“What, that I was the one to save you?”

“That it wasn’t Robb.”

“Well, I gave you _dragons,”_ Jon says, running his thumb over her cheekbone, lips quirking. “’m not sure it gets more romantic than that, Sansa. Pretty sure Robb wouldn’t have ever ridden dragons into King’s Landing.”

“It’s not a competition,” Sansa says, sounding the tiniest bit irritable. But her eyes are no longer so grieved- they even have a hint of laughter in them- so Jon counts it as a win. “Take it off,” she adds, gesturing to the jerkin, and moves towards the bed.

“It’s just past evening,” Jon comments, but he’s not hesitating to undo the laces, not at all.

They haven’t shared more than the bed yet. Those first days, Sansa had hesitated to do even that, lying stiff and unmoving on her side of the bed- but, slowly, she’d relaxed enough to shift closer to him. Only a week previous, she woke quite clearly in his arms, and she must have liked it, because every night since, she’s rolled so she’s touching just about every inch of him that she can.

“And I’ve had a tiring few weeks.” Sansa tilts her head to the side, settling against the bed. “I wasn’t japing about that bit- those past few days were exhausting.”

“Exhausting,” Jon repeats, brows pulling together.

“It’s exhausting to be in a place where nobody’s willing to admit that you exist,” Sansa says, lifting one shoulder in a graceful half-shrug. “Though I suppose it wasn’t all bad.”

“No?”

“You hear things,” she tells him. “Secrets, I suppose, though rumors might be a better term for it.” Her eyes darken, just a little, and Jon wonders what she’s remembering- but then it’s gone, and her face is as calm and open as ever. “Did you know that Daenerys is barren?”

“I... might have heard some things,” he says slowly.

“I’m sure you know what that implies.”

Jon frowns, before pulling off his jerkin and stepping closer to the bed. “I don’t.”

“You’re the heir,” Sansa says impatiently, turning to face him. “To Daenerys. To Westeros. The next-”

“I’m Dany’s age,” he says flatly. “What makes you think I’ll outlive her?”

“Then your children,” she says, hands flattening on the bedcover. Sansa exhales, slowly, and looks up at him. “Our children. They’ll inherit, if she has none. Why do you think she was so amenable to our marriage, Jon?”

He sinks onto the bed. “But- you said she threatened to kill Robb if he refused her hand.”

“Yes,” Sansa says slowly.

“Then why would she want a marriage if she was barren?”

“Because she’s young. Because heirs can wait. She wanted a marriage to the Starks, and I gave her that.” Sansa purses her lips, nails digging into the linen before she stretches out over the bed. “There’s little more we ought to offer- little more that we can offer.”

Jon moves as well, toeing off his boots and resting his head against the headboard. Sansa’s eyes are closed, shining hair fanned out over the pillows, and she looks like one of the statues he’s seen in Pentos: every inch of her soft and perfect and lovely.

“This is important to you,” he murmurs to the ceiling.

It’s soft enough that she might not have heard it, but Sansa rolls over, her sweet warmth slotting against his side, and she says, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she says, eyes so large and aching that any man might drown in them- “I’ve spent one year alone while Robb fought a war that had Joffrey beat me in front of the court. Because I’ve spent two years believing Robb and my mother died at my uncle’s wedding, and that the only surviving Stark was me. Because the North is all that we have, and I won’t let that be taken from us.”

“All the blood we’ve shed,” Jon says, quietly, “won’t bring your father back.”

Sansa turns, rises, surges up, and there’s something sharp in her eyes that shines like stars through a storm-wind. “No,” she replies. “But there are things in this world worth fighting for. Worth bleeding for.” Her hands spasm, one contracting around his thigh, the other on the bedding. “Worth dying for.”

 _“Sansa,”_ Jon says, his own blood heating. “You think your father died for something worth it? You think Bran, or Rickon, or- or _Robb,_ if we’re being honest here, how close he and your mother came to death- you think any of it was worth it?”

He’s shouting, almost, by the end of it. Sansa flinches back at the start, her eyes widening to the size of coins, before she tosses her head and firms her jaw.

“They’re not the only ones who died,” she says coldly.

“Oh, aye, let’s talk about Lord Karstark,” Jon snaps. “Or his sons. Because their deaths served such a great purpose-”

“Then let’s _talk_ about how Arya risked everything to save Robb and Mother!” Sansa retorts, eyes narrowing. “Let’s talk about how Robb risked his entire life and army and nearly lost his life for his honor! Let’s talk about how _you_ decided to land your dragon in the middle of the Red Keep just to save _me,_ Jon, let’s talk about how you’ve spent years thinking of me as something more important than _your_ life!”

“None of us have died!”

“But you have risked your lives.”

“And Father,” he says. “Or-”

“Not every death matters,” she cries, flushing, “oh, gods, is it that impossible to understand? Not every death matters, Jon, but we get to choose what our lives are worth, what we will die for, and we get to try to make it worth _something._ And nobody, not my family, not any queen, not even _you,_ my husband, can speak to me of what that is.”

His clenches his jaw. “You’re going to fight for Northern independence, then.”

“For the North,” Sansa says, voice lowering.

Another person, a person who didn’t know her quite as well, might have taken that to mean that she was faltering- but Jon knew very well how obstinate Sansa could be. This was her attempt at ending the conversation, not any sort of surrender.

“And how do you plan on doing it?”

“What do you mean?”

“How do you plan on doing it?” Jon repeats. “We haven’t begun the talks yet, that’s true enough; but who will listen to you?”

Sansa’s lip curls. “Just because no one shall notice if I hold my silence,” she says, “doesn’t mean that I must be quiet, nor does it mean that they won’t take note of what I say.”

He hisses out through his teeth. “So... you have a plan?”

She looks at him, measuring and steady, for a long minute. Jon watches her back- he’s unsure of what she wants, what she’s looking for- but Sansa seems to find it, for she nods.

“Yes,” she says, and looks as if she’s finished; but then, abruptly, she softens. It’s that- that she looks as if she’d be willing to speak to him about this, her hands skipping over the sheets in careless descriptions, finally letting words pass from her lips- that pushes Jon to draw his legs under him, to press his fists into his thighs and _listen,_ properly. “I am not half a fool, Jon. Your aunt- she has spent a lifetime attacking, has she not? She is a Targaryen, she has dragons; she has spent years learning that the best defense is a strong offense.”

“Aye.”

“But a war of words is not one where dragons can burn dissent to ash.” Sansa bites her lip. “And if we place her on the defense from the start, she will be unbalanced. It will be easier to bargain.”

He feels a smile pull at his lips. “Bargain, as if we were fisherfolk.”

“Margaery- Lord Tyrell’s daughter- she used to tell people that the lowest born were no different from the highest.” She lifts an eyebrow at him. “’Twas true enough then, and it’s true enough now. If we name Robb the king of four realms, do you not think it changes the entire setting of the conversation?”

 _King of four realms,_ Jon thinks, startled. King of four realms- but it’s true enough. The North, as he was crowned; the Riverlands through his mother; the Iron Islands by conquest; and the Vale- who have more than fifteen thousand men in Robb’s army, who, upon hearing of Daenerys’ return, decided to join with a Stark rather than a Targaryen.

He hadn’t thought of it, not truly, but Robb is the King of almost half the realms of Westeros, and of those realms, the majority chose him; as opposed to Daenerys, whose only claim on Westeros is that of her bloodline.

“Ah,” is all that comes out of his mouth, at first, though the next words are easy enough: “Daenerys didn’t come to rule over the southern half of Westeros alone, Sansa. She won’t accept this.”

“Robb won’t be able to hold to all of the realms,” Sansa agrees. “But if we make Daenerys bargain _down_ to one kingdom rather than up to that, then we will be far more likely to achieve what we need.”

Jon exhales, before deliberately relaxing against the headboard. Sansa’s eyes are cool and sharp, like the blued-steel blades of the Vale soldiers; it reminds him of the way she’d looked when she landed in Riverrun, all measured defiance and level emotion. She’s chosen- and there’s nothing Jon can say to shake her from her course now.

“So that’s what you shall do tomorrow,” he says.

“Yes.” She leans forwards, just a little, and brushes her hand against the back of his. Jon lets his hand flip so his fingers curl over hers and uses the leverage to bring her closer to him, so she can settle against him, her back to his chest, warm and soft once more. “That is what I intend, Jon, yes.”

He trusts Dany, loves her, has spent years with her. But Jon also trusts Robb, also loves Robb- has spent years with him as well.

Only a few days ago, he’d been certain that the wounds of war would have to be closed. Peace was necessary. Everyone was tired; the smallfolk had suffered enough. But if Jon knows anything in all the world, he knows these two things: that a good king is as beholden to his subjects as they are to him, and that Robb is one of the best kings Westeros has ever seen.

Things are nowhere near as simple as he’d hoped- it’s a tangle, all that’s before them; of lives and honor and land, and Jon’s not quite sure if he’ll survive the unsnarling.

But then he remembers Sansa’s warmth by his side, slotted under his arm, sweet and trusting, and Jon’s certain of one more thing: he’ll die before offering Sansa any more pain.

“You’re thinking too much,” she murmurs, and Jon sighs, lets his hand trace over the smooth weight of her hair.

“It’ll be dangerous.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t like it,” Jon continues.

Sansa tips her head back, eyes meeting his. “I know.”

He sighs, again. “I can’t stop you.”

“No,” Sansa says, the faintest hint of a smile written across her face. “You cannot.”

“Well, then, I have no choice.” Jon’s head droops forwards, exhaustedly, but his arm remains tight around Sansa’s waist, fingers loose around the curve of her body. “I’ll be there,” he tells her, half-irritably, half-fondly. “If this is of such importance to you, Sansa, then I’ll be there.”

It’s all he knows, truly: to protect Sansa, to love her, to offer her everything he has.

She trusts him, trusts him enough to speak to him, to rest in his presence when she won’t offer the same to her own mother- and- it’s- well. Call Jon a fool, call him Targaryen-mad or Stark-tragic or bastard-lustful, but his heart’s been Sansa’s since the moment he landed in King’s Landing, and the very idea that she might offer any of that love back is enough to leave his dilemmas moot.

In the end, Jon’s choice isn’t between his father’s side or his mother’s, isn’t between Dany and Robb, isn’t between Targaryen and Stark. In the end, his choice is Sansa, twice over, thrice over, a choice he’d make for a thousand lifetimes.

 _We’ve all lost too much,_ Robb had said, days previous.

Now, his wife in his arms, her warmth seeping into his bones, Jon can only think, _Lost too much to lose more now._

...

Sansa wakes early the next morning, early enough that the sky is still dark, with Jon fast asleep beside her. She wishes, for a moment, that she could just remain beside him; that the world could stay outside these walls for long enough that she can forget it exists at all.

But Sansa’s not in the habit of shrinking back. She sighs, instead, and rises, careful not to jostle Jon; then she takes the cloak Jon shed before slipping into bed and wraps it around her shoulders. It’s large enough that nobody will be able to see beneath, and it’s warm to boot. The door creaks, just a little, when she opens it, but Jon doesn’t even seem to hear.

Outside the room, Riverrun is still asleep.

It’s just barely dawn, the sky still a soft grey, and there are few enough people around, fewer still who are aware enough of their surroundings to notice her. Sansa moves easily in the shadows, exploring the castle slowly- she’s never been to Riverrun before, after all, and though there’s numerous similarities in the architecture of the castle to the Red Keep, there are differences as well.

It’s why she doesn’t realize that one door isn’t just one that opens into another corridor, but rather into a garden.

A garden that’s not been tended in a long time, it seems, for Sansa can’t discern any maintenance. There are thick vines and blooming flowers, and trees tall enough to shade the entire ground despite the rising sun. Sansa hesitates for a moment: it’s cold, cold enough to leave her shivering even under her cloak, and she can’t be sure of what lurks in the darkness.

But the fresh smell of pine needles is so sharp in her nose- and the damp, earthy coolness of the garden is so entirely reminiscent of Winterfell’s godswood, she can’t find it in herself to be afraid.

The air is cold, like the North. Sansa breathes it in, lets it rest in her lungs, and steps out into the garden.

There are no paths- that’s the first thing she realizes. Even as the sky lightens above her, sunlight shaded green by all the leaves, she can’t find anything in the garden that’s not derelict or overgrown. There’s a broken-down stone formation a few feet to the side that might once have been a well. Growing over it are purple flowers, smaller than her thumbnail, that she’s never seen before; Sansa plucks a full vine of them and starts to search for another vine, one stiff enough to give shape to a crown that she can weave.

It’s while searching for it that she stumbles over Robb.

Or, a person who looks quite like him. It’s hard to identify amidst the dappled shadows, but he’s young, Sansa thinks, with hair Tully-bright and a cloak of furs spread over his broad shoulders. He’s seated between two trees, back curved against one and the steel-shod toes of his boots touching the roots of the other; the trees are tall enough to match his height, slender enough that he could likely span their trunk with both hands.

Sansa’s foot comes down on a dry leaf, and his bowed head, pillowed on arms that rested on drawn-up knees, jerks upright wildly.

 _Robb,_ she thinks, then, not half-bitter.

“Sansa,” he breathes, when he recognizes her.

There’s a part of her that resents him for looking so young; the commander who won a hundred battles, whom she bled for before the Iron Throne- he doesn’t deserve to look so fragile here. But the dawn-light is harsh, and under a canopy that makes her so homesick she can scarcely breathe, Sansa can’t find it in herself to hold to that resentment.

“Robb,” she replies, and swirls the flare of the cloak around her knees to settle against a nearby tree. “I didn’t expect anyone to be awake,” Sansa confesses, and Robb’s teeth flash in a hesitant smile.

“People usually aren’t. It’s why- why I come here.”

“To be alone?”

“Yes, partly.” He pauses, looks at her, and then seems to deflate even further, spine molding against curve of the tree behind him. “I like it. The trees are nice, and there’s not much noise, and-”

“-and,” Sansa finishes, mostly because she’s certain Robb won’t ever say it: “it feels like Winterfell.”

Robb looks at her. “Yes,” he says, finally. “Yes, it feels like that, too, a little.”

“I miss it,” she murmurs, drawing up her own knees and resting one cheek on them. “I never thought I would. But now I want to- to go back there. To see the kitchens and the halls and the godswood-” Sansa bites her lip, bites back the flood of words rising up her throat.

It won’t do anyone any good if she were to spill her guts to the world. They’re ruined, now, ruined on the inside, ruined along with the scars on her back. She’s wondered, before, if she would bleed red, if such a healthy, vibrant color could be given to a fool and coward such as she- but even Petyr had bled such a gushing red on the flagstones of the Red Keep, and she knows him to be a consummate liar and traitor, knows him to be the murderer of her father.

Some would call it a terrible thing- knowing one's own humanity only due to the humanity of other, more terrible people- but Sansa can only feel relief at the thought.

As she said: she’s broken, inside.

“I wanted to leave,” Sansa finishes, because there’s so little else she can allow herself to say. “And now all I want is to go back.”

“To see us there,” Robb says. He pauses, then continues: “Do you remember, those games in the godswood- the ones where Arya and Jon would climb the trees and you’d shout at them to get down?”

“And I’d go off and sulk,” Sansa says, a small smile tugging at her lips. “They’d bring crowns, after that, wouldn’t they? Of leaves and berries and- oh, gods, do you remember that time when Arya made it of thorns?”

“Well,” Robb says, “you whinged to everyone from the cook to Father about it. I doubt anyone would forget.”

“How dare you!” Sansa gasps. “I’ve still got the scars from that!”

It’s a lighter feeling than she’s felt in a long time. Not quite happiness, but something that fizzes in the back of her throat like the froth of the cider Margaery had once given her. There’s something about this place, about the mulch under her feet and pine-sharp air, that seems to lighten her and Robb both: it feels as if these past few years haven’t happened, as if anger and distrust and cold grief hasn’t lodged itself between their ribs in the place where once their love for their father and brothers lived.

But love and laughter can only last for so long. The levity in Robb’s face fades, along with the smile; and though he looks reluctant to speak on it, he does.

“Yes,” he says, quiet. “And I hear that they aren’t the only scars you have.”

Sansa inhales slowly, hands tightening on the fabric covering her knee. “You’ve heard the rumors, then.”

“Everyone has,” Robb tells her. “Though some are worse than others.” He pauses for a moment, and then he announces, suddenly: “It should have been me there, to rescue you. I know- I know that-” There’s frustration in his voice and in his eyes when he continues, as if words are not enough to convey his meaning; or, as she thinks is more likely, there are too many words for him to choose. “Yesterday,” he decides, in the end, “in the solar- well. If you cannot find it in yourself to forgive me, Sansa, I’d understand.”

She doesn’t answer, not for a long time. The weight of Jon’s cloak is warm around her shoulders, though, and it’s the creature comfort of his smell around her, of Winterfell surrounding her, that gives her the courage to say what she does next.

“When I was in King’s Landing,” Sansa murmurs, eyes affixed on a patch of moss by Robb’s feet rather than his eyes- Robb’s eyes have always been piercing, and she doesn’t think she can bear to look at them now- “Cersei- and Joffrey, though Joffrey spoke a lot less- they always called me stupid.” She swallows, hard. “To hear that Arya saved you, that she could live with you for three entire years while I thought you were dead for a good portion of it, was- it just seemed-” a breath, in, out, steady and raw in her ears, “-true.”

Robb shifts, as if to take her in his arms, but Sansa sets her shoulders at a defensive slant. Almost instantly, he freezes.

“I don’t blame you for not rescuing me,” she says softly, and lets her eyes drift up, doesn’t let herself look away.

Her father went to his death with his head held high, dignified to the last, and Sansa is his eldest daughter. Her mother bled out of scars along either side of her neck, enough that everyone thought her dead- and Sansa is her mother’s heir. She might be ruined, might be broken, a specter of a girl who’d once loved lemoncakes and finery- once, she’d been a summer lady, but now she is a princess of winter, a Princess of Winter, a lady with teeth sharp as the wolf they once killed.

Sansa is a fool and a coward and a traitor.

But she will not let herself falter here.

“I could have spared you so much pain,” Robb says, softly, just as soft as Sansa. “You ought to blame me.”

“It is mine to choose,” Sansa replies. “And- there is enough hatred in this world, don’t you think? I can choose to weep over the scars Joffrey left on my body, I can choose to rage over Father’s death, I can choose to hate you over your abandonment- but I choose not to.” She sighs. “And, anyhow, I am not the only one who has lost over-much in these years. Do you think I don’t know that?”

“We’ve all lost so much, but-”

“I wasn’t speaking of us all.” Sansa forces her voice to be even when she continues. “We’ve lost a father, two brothers; and, of course, I feared that I’d lost you and Mother and Arya- but you’ve lost more than that, as well, Robb.”

He blinks at her. There’s comprehension there, she’s sure of it; but also, layered on top: a wilful desire to misunderstand.

“What are you talking about?”

But Sansa’s not a stranger; she’s Robb’s _sister,_ and she can still remember his first love, his first kiss, his worst defeat in the training yard- Sansa might temper her tongue for herself a thousand times over, but she won’t ever do it simply to make her brother comfortable.

“Your wife,” she says, voice gentling from the truth’s initial sting.

“My wife.” Robb sounds so weary when he says those two syllables, worn down as the stones of the well a few feet behind them, a man of sixty years settling into the sloping shoulders of a boy just past two decades. “What of Jeyne?”

“What happened to her?”

 _They say that you loved her,_ Sansa thinks. _They say you were bewitched by her. Everyone calls you the King in the North despite knowing the North to be held by the Greyjoys, despite knowing you to have never set foot there in years, but-_

“She lives,” Robb says shortly. “I haven’t seen her in years, but- but she lives.”

_-but I have never heard a single soul name Jeyne Westerling your queen._

“In the Westerlands?” Sansa asks.

Robb’s lips twist. “Yes. Alive and well, I hear- but. She’s married.”

“Married,” she says.

“Yes,” he says, wryness settling into the dear bones of his face. “Married, to another. While Jeyne believed me to be dead- but married nevertheless.”

“Oh,” Sansa breathes, gut twisting. “I’d no idea.”

“No, it’s not common knowledge.” Robb leans back, stretches his legs out. He looks sad; sad and tired. The resignation in his eyes hurts more than his anger ever could. “I miss her, in truth,” Robb tells her, “though less than I’d thought I would. Jeyne- she was a dearer friend, I think, than ever a wife.”

Sansa bites her lip before reaching out and laying her hand in the crook of Robb’s elbow. “I’m sorry.”

“As am I.” Robb sighs, then places his hand over hers. “For everything, Sansa, a thousand times over. For the blood you shed, and the truths I never told, and the danger I placed you in. If I’d been better-”

“-but you weren’t,” Sansa says.

Robb flinches at it, and Sansa feels her breath catch in her lungs, abruptly remembering the shake of Robb’s shoulders in the hours after Bran fell- she’s not seeing the king, Sansa realizes, not here, not now: all that’s here is her brother, elder by three years, dutiful to a fault, a boy who’s always swallowed responsibility like it were Arbor Gold, like it were something to enjoy. Her hesitation drips away as fog before the morning sun; and then Sansa catches his sleeve between her fingers and drags him towards her.

“You weren’t,” she says, fingers digging into the fur across his shoulder-blades, feeling Robb’s forehead heavy on her shoulder. “But you couldn’t be, and I cannot fault you for that.”

It’s uncomfortable, Robb’s bones digging into Sansa’s, the morning air cold enough to leave her fingers aching; but she’s not been held by her brother in almost four years. It’s lovely- that’s what this is, more than any discomfort- lovelier than almost anything she could imagine, despite the give of mulch against her knees and stiff armor pressing into her arm. A warmth like a hearthfire settles into her bones, steady and unshaking, chasing away the morning’s bite.

They stay like that for a long time.

…

The sun slants down from the high windows of Riverrun’s Great Hall.

Sansa wears a gown of Tully and Stark blue, her hair brushed back and high once more. Jon can almost see the flutter of her pulse at her neck, the beat of her heart obvious through the thin skin there. She’s nervous, Jon's sure of it, but she hides it well; he’s also quite certain that none else know her to be anything less than perfectly composed.

They’re seated at the high table, Robb’s throne tall and starkly undecorated compared to Dany’s chair on Jon’s left; Sansa’s on Jon’s other side, and Robb’s on her further side, and her mother is to sit on Robb’s right. Dany’s already seated- she was there before noon, in all truth, looking as stiff and haughty as she ever got in a room of strangers. 

But Robb’s not there yet, and the bannermen are getting steadily impatient with him. Jon doesn’t know why, though he's starting to suspect that Sansa _does:_ she’s spent the past two days in huddled conference with Robb- ones that she’s invited him to, ones that he’s refused under the full knowledge that his presence there would only make everyone further uncomfortable.

When Lady Catelyn enters the room, there’s a collective sigh of relief that the feast can begin soon. Everyone knows, after all, that Robb’s never far from his mother; where she goes, he’ll follow soon after.

A quick look over at Dany proves that she’s not impressed, but neither is she particularly irritated. 

 _That,_ Jon thinks, hiding the twist of his lips behind his cup, _will change soon._

“You look lovely,” Catelyn murmurs to Sansa, one hand brushing almost thoughtlessly over the back of Jon’s jerkin. Then, directed to Dany: “I apologize for the wait- Robb got caught up in the stables this morning.” She shrugs, the same half-lift Sansa’d done a few days previous. “Clearly, hawking can make even kings lose track of time.”

“Clearly,” Dany says. “May we get started on dinner, then?”

“Of course,” Catelyn says, turning to reach for her cup of wine.

Sansa stirs at that- she reaches out and lays her hand over her mother’s. The other, clenched in her skirts, creeps a half-inch in the other direction and Jon lets his arm twitch forwards. Their fingers just barely brush each others before Sansa takes the cup and stands.

 “Let me,” she tells her mother, more a vibration in her chest than a true word. 

Sunlight catches on her hair, brightening it until it shines like polished metal. 

“My lords,” Sansa says, and the ambient noise fades away as ripples through a stone falling in still water. The bannermen turn their faces towards her, as flowers to the sun, and Sansa glows at it, a star shrouded in human skin, a queen without a crown, a wolf finally flexing her claws. 

“I beg of you to join me,” she continues, “in welcoming my brother, your elected King: sworn ruler of the North and the Vale and the Riverlands, the conqueror of the Iron Islands.” Sansa lifts her wine-cup high, the sunlight shimmering off the cut glass to throw rainbows across the audience. “To King Robb, my lords: the Young Wolf, the Twice-Risen King.”

When she tips her head back and swallows, in time to the cheers of the bannermen, a single curl of red hair slips out of her coif and falls down her neck. It’s pride Jon feels when he sees her like this- it’s a possessive sort of pride, a low, mean sort of pride, a sort of pride that makes him feel faintly guilty; the kind where Jon can see the appreciation of other men and think only _none of you shall ever know her in all entirety-_ but it is pride nonetheless. 

Jon loops his finger in her red curl when she sits down, and tugs, and feels that pride lift his lips into a smile. It takes Sansa a moment to realize what that expression means, but when she does her face softens into a look that she’s only ever directed at him twice before: first the night of their wedding, when she wrapped herself around him and wept; second the day she arrived Riverrun and saw him seated outside of their room.

It’s the look of a woman in love, and though Jon knows it to be foolish beyond all reason to think she’ll ever truly love him, he cannot help but think it only a matter of time. 

Hope, perhaps, is what sweetens his wine so much, for it’s never before tasted so wonderful.


	4. let me kneel before you now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa inhales, exhales, and wonders when, exactly, she went mad enough to love Jon. It’s snuck up on her, at the least, like a sunrise: one moment the sky is dark, and the next there is light, and that moment between the two is unidentifiable. That line, she thinks now, Jon’s blood smeared over the edges of her gown, his warmth and solidness in her arms- that line is not clear, and likely never will be; but Sansa yet loves him as deep as her mother ever loved her father, as abiding as the sea’s waves and the wind’s chill.

“Would you like to dance?”

The quiet words almost startle Sansa into spilling her drink. She turns to Jon and lifts her brows.

“To this?” She nods to the dancers- it’s a fast-paced song for southron dances, and Daenerys’ court seems aflutter with delight at the edging of impropriety. “I didn’t know you’d learned,” Sansa says, voice tipping into teasing, though her face remains impassive. “You always hated it.”

“Well.” Jon hesitates. “You’re wearing one of those dresses, aren’t you?”

Again, Sansa’s startled- this time into silence.

“Yes,” she says, finally. “I hadn’t- I hadn’t thought you’d notice.”

It’s her mother’s gown, one of her father’s gifts to his bride upon her arrival to the North. To her knowledge, her mother’s only worn it once. But it’s one of the few that she’s not altered to her length over time- one of the few gowns she has that fit Sansa well now.

“I’m not _blind,”_ Jon says, nudging her shoulder with his.

Sansa sips her ale to hide the smile on her lips. “Well- I’ve not the practice. Not to use the dress properly.”

“You won’t hear me complain,” Jon says.

“When the weights hit you hard enough to bruise I will,” Sansa tells him, teeth sharp against her tongue- and then, at the quirk of his lips, she sighs.

That’s the difference- Northern reels are made with flaring skirts in mind, and to make the skirts fan out so perfectly, there are little weights embedded into the hems. Sansa never really liked Northern dances all that much, in truth; they were too fast, too improper for her taste before. But Jon’s here now, and his eyes are sparking, and she- she _wants,_ suddenly, abruptly. Sansa nods and sets aside her cup and seizes his hand and stands. It’s a kind of madness, she thinks, but a good kind all the same.

“Tell Robb,” she says, blood bubbling in her veins. “Tell him to tell the musicians for a- a northern dance. The Wolf’s Den? Or-”

“Alys’ Lament,” Jon suggests, and the wickedness in his expression is enough to make her laugh.

“Yes,” Sansa says. Alys’ Lament: a song of poor Alys Umber, the wife of a Glover too deep invested in counting gold to love her. It’s a comedy and the lyrics always left her in laughter, but there’s no singer here tonight- they’ve only drums and flutes and harps, and the drums will offer a simple enough beat for them. “Yes, tell Robb-”

But Jon only nods to Robb, who signals to the musicians, and then the single drum starts up.

“You _planned_ this,” Sansa accuses, gasping.

Jon’s answer is only his hand, slipping down to grip her wrist and guide her to the floor.

She’d loved to dance, once, Sansa knows; loved to dance the southron dances, the waltzes and the quadrilles, the dances made of clasped hands and slow revolutions and the high piercing notes of a flute- it’s been years since she danced a proper Northern dance, though, even longer with a dancing dress and a music beat, and she can hardly remember the steps. She thinks she knows, but there’s a chance-

“I’ve not danced this since before you left,” she tells Jon, voice lilting up into hesitance. When he doesn’t answer, she shoves at his shoulder with the heel of her palm. “Jon.”

“You’ll remember,” he tells her. “It’s right simple, Sansa. Come on.”

They start out at the edge of the floor, almost in the shadows, Jon facing Sansa, one hand held up and the other folded behind their waists. The drum is slow in the beginning; Sansa turns in tune with it, stepping away from Jon for one half-step, and then returning with a full twist, skirts still swirling about her ankles from the lack of speed. She’s hesitant and slow at first. But Jon was right, too: it doesn’t take long for her muscles to remember or for her to fall into the rhythm.

Jon’s part is trickier and simpler at once- fewer steps to do when they separate, no skirts to control- but he’s the one who has to catch her on the twist back, and half the fun is in making him work for that.

So Sansa _does:_ she spins, and after the first few separations she gains enough confidence to start trying tricks. The next time she turns she only does so for a quarter-step, and returns to him a breath too early. Then she takes a larger step and returns a half-head to his left, which Jon saves by complete chance alone. Then- then Sansa flicks the weighted part of her skirts square into his shin, disguised as a flare to the rest of the audience, and lets herself smile when he glares at her through the wince.

The best dancers are said to appear as if they’re connected by a string, winding in and out without any pauses. Sansa’s not sure of how good they are, but she’s enjoying herself, feeling the skirts rise like clouds, feeling Jon’s surprisingly skilled hands along her waist and shoulders, feeling the sound of the drums fade under the thunder of her heart until all she knows is the swirl of her feet across the floor.

The beat is faster, now, twice as fast as the beginning; then thrice, then four times- and Sansa can feel the slip of her feet against the floor, feel the stretch of her muscles as she keeps to the rhythm.

It’s fast enough that her hair slips out of the style it was in, pins clattering against the floor and braids unraveling. Sansa feels the weight of it swing out. She leans forward to balance it and her shoulder knocks into Jon’s chest; he absorbs the blow by turning neatly, guiding her with him- and then he pauses, hand tightening on her waist as the drums slow down.

The song ends on that note. Sansa’s head is tipped up, one of her hands wrapped over one of his shoulders and the other flattened against the forearm wrapped around her waist- Jon’s other hand is cupping her shoulder to guide her properly. She can feel his breath on her forehead, see the pulse thudding in his throat. It’s easily the closest she’s ever been to him in public.

“You’ve been practicing,” she says, lowly.

The corner of Jon’s mouth kicks up. “You like dancing,” he replies.

The simplicity of the statement makes her flush for absolutely no reason. She hopes that her cheeks are red enough from the exertion to hide it- but they’re close enough that she suspects otherwise. Slowly, Sansa pulls away.

“I- used to,” she says. “But it’s been a long time.”

“You, ah, dance well.” Jon looks away, then back, then away again. “And you were right about the weights.”

“Hurt, did it?” Sansa asks, tone arch. She might’ve offered him more sympathy for his winces were it not for her knowledge of Jon in the training yard: he’s taken far worse hits with far less complaining, and that’s with less padding than the breeches give him.

They’re at the edge of the dance floor, in an area dark enough to throw shadows over the Jon’s face. It’s private, or at least as private as it can get in a room like this, and Sansa relaxes into it. When she feels Jon bend his head a fraction, curving over her shoulder, her chest tightens; when he says, in a tone she’s never quite heard before, “A worthwhile sacrifice-” Sansa’s stomach swoops wildly. Her nails bite into Jon’s shirt, straight into the muscle of his shoulderblade, and the roll of his throat in response has her mouth dry.

“Jon,” she says. It’s breathless, wavering; too high to maintain anything approaching indifference.

One of Jon’s hands rises, pressing against her spine, drawing her closer to him. She has half a moment to think, _oh. Oh, he’ll kiss me-_

She’s almost entirely engrossed in Jon, and it’s why she barely notices the shadow of the man behind him until Jon himself realizes- which, Sansa notes, is only after the man taps Jon’s shoulder. She squeaks, distressingly loud. There’s irritation writ across Jon’s brow as he turns to face the man.

“My lord,” he says. It takes her a beat to recognize him: Jason Mallister, one of Robb’s most favored bannermen. She suspects he’s slightly drunk, for this kind of interruption is- if not rude, at least not particularly polite, either; and Lord Mallister is known for his chivalry above all else.

“What is it?” Jon asks, tone bordering on rude.

“I- apologize for the interruption,” Mallister says. “But there were matters I wished to speak to you of- on the treaty-”

“Urgent matters?”

“Private matters, certainly.” Mallister hesitates, then continues. “Urgent- not immediate, no.”

“Then we can speak of it in the morning, can we not?”

The rudeness is sharp in his tone now, and Sansa would have stamped his foot if she thought Mallister wouldn’t have noticed it. But he would, and so she keeps silent, waiting for Mallister to bow and leave. When he does- as soon as he does- she flicks her skirt at Jon’s shin, straight at the bone she’d aimed at before.

 _“What?”_ Jon asks, flinching at the shock.

Sansa lifts a brow. “That was poorly done of you,” she informs him. “Lord Mallister-”

“Poorly done? _He_ was poorly done!”

“That makes no sense,” Sansa says loftily. “And, anyhow, even if he were poorly done, there was no call to be so rude to him.”

“He was rude first,” says Jon. “And-”

“And you’re not a child. You could’ve been politer.”

“I was angry,” Jon tells her, and she can see the way his eyes flit to her lips and then back to her eyes. “I was- we were- in the middle of something rather private.”

“I’d say so,” Sansa replies. The burgeoning heat that had been inside of her is gone now. There’s only a laugh, pulled tight against the corners of her lips, and she offers that to Jon: true, and bright, and loud.

 _If we cannot have that warmth,_ she thinks, watching his solemn face split into unfamiliar creases- _then we shall at least have this kind._

…

The next morning, her mother enters her chambers.

Jon’s already left for the morning- he wakes early, as a habit. Sansa’s complained about that enough times that he knows not to make overmuch noise now; she’s always tended to sleeping in, and that hasn’t changed over the years, only cemented further.

But she’s awake now, her face washed and dress set out. The maids are yet to enter, for she has none of her own and they only come after having cared for their respective ladies first- her mother had asked, in the beginning, but Sansa’d refused. There’s already a shortage, and she’s learned to do up the laces herself.

“You enjoyed yourself last night,” her mother comments, lips lifting.

Sansa smiles back. “Yes. Your dress- it was lovely.” A tad too tight along the abdomen, but that had only made her further breathless. And Jon had looked utterly startled, which she’s not seen in too long. “I’ve laid it out on the settee.”

“You ought to keep it,” she replies. “It’s looked better on you than ever on me. And I’ve little call to dance any longer, I’m afraid.”

“You will,” Sansa says quietly, and the surety in the statement makes her mother lift her brows. “Mother. You cannot spend the rest of your life in mourning.”

Her mother sighs. “Perhaps not. But it shall be some time, Sansa, before we ever have the kind of peace in which I can move past your father’s memory.” There’s wryness in the tilt of her lips, and Sansa thinks it might be the saddest thing she’s ever seen, even sadder than the resignation in Robb’s face had been. “I am content, sweetling, don’t ever doubt that. I shall be known as the wife of an honorable man, and the mother of an honorable king.” The smile widens, turning brighter, truer. “Perhaps, even- the grandmother of an honorable king.”

It takes Sansa a moment to understand. When she does, she feels the entirety of her face flush brighter than a fire’s flare.

_“Mother.”_

“I am not japing,” her mother says, with an equanimity that might have been amusing if it weren’t so infuriating. “At least- not entirely. Anyone can see that he loves you; that you love him back. And I might not have liked Jon Snow all that much, but he’s cared for you and protected you when I- and Robb, and everyone else in all the world- could not. I would not begrudge your happiness for all the bastards in the world.”

 _Yes,_ Sansa thinks, _but to have children I would need to lie with him. Truly lie with him._

And that- that, Sansa is not sure of. She thinks she could do it, but all her knowledge of the marriage bed tells her that it is something to endure, not enjoy; something painful, something that only offers any kindness with the babes that come, not with the bed itself. But perhaps- hopefully, perchance, she will be able to find the strength needed to suffer through it. At the least she knows that Jon will be as kind as possible.

Her mother steps forwards, lifting the brush from Sansa’s vanity and motioning for her to turn. There’s a question there- a faint one, a small one- but they both ignore it in favor of working through Sansa’s hair. The motion of her mother’s fingers through her hair, and then the smooth tug of the brush, lulls Sansa into a state of drowsiness.

It’s that, perhaps, that lowers her defenses; she can’t be certain. But the words slip out anyhow:

“He reminds me of Father, sometimes.”

The gentle movements cease before continuing slowly. Catelyn Stark has spent so long being her husband’s widow- Sansa’s unsure if this is painful for her, but she does know that there’s no one else she can tell this to, and it’s that thought that spurs her to continue.

“He’s kind, Mother. Kind and gentle, and he hasn’t once forced me into anything I did not wish.” She smiles into the mirror. It’s her prettiest smile: wide teeth, a curve of bone that lights up her eyes even when all she feels is despair. She learned to bare her teeth from Cersei, but the veiling is all her own creation. “It’s more than I’d ever thought to dream of, after Father’s death. And- and, after that, after I saw Father’s severed head- well. It’s more than I ever deserved, too.”

Her mother stills at that last sentence, hands fluttering down to her shoulders from the hair.

“Sansa,” she breathes, in a voice that chokes on the thorns of her name, “sweetling, don’t you dare say such a thing again.”

“What? That I am undeserving?” Sansa flicks the words away easily. “‘Tis only the truth, Mother. I am a traitor thrice over, once to Father, second to my betrothed, third to Robb and you.” She arches her eyebrows. “Very few traitors are offered a prince’s hand in marriage. Even fewer are offered the chance of a marriage the kind that I’ve been given.”

_And, of course, none would be so foolish to ruin all that they’ve been gifted simply due to their fears._

“Name one person who has suffered as you have,” her mother declares, hands tightening on Sansa’s shoulders. “Years in a castle with a king and a queen who hate you with all they have; a family dead and scattered, a family you thought _dead_ for years on end; Kingsguard swords stained with your blood-”

Her voice breaks, shatters, as a wineglass on flagstones. The ending startles Sansa, even as her mother’s words had felt like pointed darts against her breast- pointed, poisoned, terrible darts.

But her mother is Catelyn Stark. She’s not a woman to falter. She’s not built for it, not truly. Sansa lifts her hands to press against her mother’s palms, to offer what little comfort she can; but her mother draws herself together with only a few more breaths, not even pausing for Sansa.

“You are not at fault,” she says, fiercely. “Not for Ned’s death. Not for your marriage to Tyrion. Not for trusting in people decades older than you, not for believing in stories of the world I wished you to inherit, not for being kind or foolish or all the things I know you to be.”

“I-” Sansa can feel her heart start to race, hard and pounding in her chest. “I- if I’d known-”

“But you didn’t,” Catelyn says, a lady, a wife, a mother; terrible and furious and implacable as an avalanche. “You _didn’t,_ for you were a child, for you were an innocent. And what you paid for that was a price far too high.”

Her hand grips Sansa’s chin, wrenches it up, rougher than she’s ever been before with her. There’s something of a comfort in the desperation with which she wishes to make Sansa believe her.

“You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known, and I could never blame you for that,” she says, looking at Sansa directly in her eyes, not through the mirror. “Tell me you agree.” Sansa hesitates, and her mother repeats, louder, sharper: _“Tell me you agree.”_

“I’m not at fault,” Sansa mouths. “I- I agree.”

“Good,” her mother says firmly. “Now, say that again. Repeat it, Sansa, as many times as you need. Until you believe it.”

 _I am not at fault,_ Sansa thinks, and remembers Robb- in the godswood, the weight of him in her arms, her words to him. These are different things, different curses, different burdens to bear; but similar too, in their own way. Sansa knows she’ll carry this guilt with her until the end of her days the same as Robb ever will. But her mother’s surety has ensured it isn’t all-consuming, at the least, and that’s something to cherish. _I am not at fault._

_I am not at fault._

Perhaps if she says it enough times, she’ll even come close to believing it.

…

She still feels shaken when she enters the councilroom.

Robb is there already, along with Daenerys and their bannermen, but Sansa can’t see Jon, no matter how much she tries. It’s only when she realizes that Lord Mallister is missing as well that she realizes the two of them must still be talking to each other. She shrugs it off in favor of sitting beside Robb, though unease still simmers in her belly.

“You enjoyed yourself last night,” Robb says, amusedly.

Sansa flushes immediately and wrestles with the urge to bury her face in her hands. If there’s one person who can make her forget her troubled mind, it’s surely Robb. “Did Jon tell everyone that he wanted to dance with me?”

“Not everyone. I’m sure there’s a servant out there who doesn’t know.”

“You ought to have told me,” Sansa tells him.

He startles. “It’s my fault now?”

 _“Everything_ is your fault,” she hisses, and would say more if the introductions didn’t cut her off.

It’s taken them ten long weeks to get here, to reach this compromise. Daenerys’ insistence on using marriage as a tool resulted in three such unions to bind the North and the south: Jorah Mormont and Sybell Spicer- Lady Sybell had been widowed years previous, her husband slain by Lord Mallister once his wife’s role in the Red Wedding was revealed, though she herself was relatively safe in the Crag; Myrcella Baratheon- or Lannister, as it may be- and Patrek Mallister; and, of course, Jon and Sansa themselves.

The Vale will negotiate terms independently of Robb; it’s why they left, almost a week previous, ostensibly in a bid to identify a leader to represent them against Daenerys. As to the Iron Islands- Robb is to maintain control over them until the North is free of the Greyjoys, upon which time they are to revert to Daenerys’ care.

Jon is to help Robb in that effort. It’s a stroke of genius on Sansa’s part, in truth, that particular idea: it’s ensured that Jon is there in the North as he wished to be; it offers Daenerys the peace of mind that one of her trusted lieutenant is watching over the efforts; it brings a dragon, to use as a threat if not in actuality.

Daenerys is gaining a good portion of the Riverlands, along with the entirety of the Iron Islands and Vale. From four kingdoms, she’s bargained Robb down to less than two; it’s a feat that Sansa and Robb have taken care to paint as frustrating, rather than relieving.

There is one more issue, however, to discuss.

“My wife,” Robb says, once they’re all seated, “is in the Westerlands. She is married to a knight of Lannister choosing and, according to all reports, the marriage was done against her will.”

“I believed her dead,” Daenerys replies. Her brows are pulled tight. Sansa remembers the way she’d sat on the Iron Throne, the play of firelight along her lovely features, the echo of her pronouncement: _I will have House Stark wed House Targaryen._ Daenerys had thought to marry Robb. She hadn’t known of Jeyne, just as Sansa had not; that unknowing must be nagging at her now. “And if she were married-”

“I bring this up to tell you that I wish her to return.” Robb’s fingers clench on the arm of his throne, a convulsive movement that no one else can see, that makes Sansa’s heart tighten. “I would wish to see her. She is a citizen of your kingdoms now, in practice as well as in truth; and this- this is the last thing I ask of you, in the name of peace.”

There is silence, for a good half-minute. Sansa can see the pity in some of the lords’ eyes and it infuriates her- she can’t imagine what poor Robb must be feeling.

But Daenerys nods, tipping her head forwards.

“In the name of friendship,” she says, and smiles, bright. “It shall be done.”

The meeting ends then. Sansa and Robb remain seated as everyone else files out- their mother quirks her lips at them before leaving as well. She’d mentioned something of taking an afternoon’s rest, when she braided Sansa’s hair, and likely will enjoy that deeply, now that the treaty is all but finished. And after that it’s just the two of them, and Sansa sighs, back slumping out of the stiff set she’d held it in.

“That was easier than I’d expected.”

“What, you thought Queen Daenerys might have refused you?” Sansa stands, plucks two wineglasses from the table and pours out a measure for Robb, a barest sip for herself.

It’s more for the idea than any true enjoyment of the drink- Sansa’s never truly liked the taste of wine, and Cersei had ever loved it which made her even more loathe to touch it. But Robb likes wine and it’s his actions they’re celebrating, so she hands the glass over.

“No,” he says. “But perhaps she’d want another parcel of land, or another marriage- I was rather worried about that.” His lips curve up. “I’m running out of unmarried people, you see, to offer up for her.”

“Such difficulties,” Sansa sighs, sinking down on her seat. “Anyone would name you jobless if you told them that.”

“Jobless?” He glares at her. “I’d remind you that I’ve ruled this kingdom for the past three years!”

“From what I’ve heard, Mother’s done more of that than you.”

Robb subsides ungracefully, but there’s still a smile there, hidden along the curve of his lashes, and Sansa feels her lips lift in response.

“Mother wishes everything to be entirely perfect-” he begins, only to be cut off by the opening of the door.

It’s Jon who enters. Sansa knows the breadth of his shoulders well, now, has its familiarity etched deep into her mind. She smiles at him and rises, hands stretching out.

“Jon!” Robb says, smile widening in greeting- “Oh, gods, you’ve good timing. Sansa’s making my crown out to be Mother’s again, I need _help-”_

“Is this true?”

The laughter rising in Sansa’s throat dies an abrupt death at the tone of Jon’s voice. He doesn’t so much as look at her, eyes affixed to Robb- there’s a dull flush rising in his cheeks and a wildness that almost frightens her.

“Is what true?” Robb asks.

Jon holds out a parchment, hands trembling, knuckles white as silver. “Tell me it isn’t,” he says, when Robb takes it. “Robb- _tell me I’m wrong.”_

Robb’s face pales, just a little, when he reads it. His eyes flick to Sansa, then back to the paper, then to Jon.

“Jon,” he says slowly. “What- where did you even find this?”

“Is it true?” Jon grits out. “Answer that.”

“Jon,” he says, again, this time quiet, this time resigned.

Jon can see the truth written out across Robb’s face: it is true, whatever the paper is. That confirmation is enough to make him hunch over, to hone whatever emotion he’s feeling, right up until he looks infuriated enough to breathe fire.

“So Mallister was right.” He steps away, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

“Mallister?” Robb frowns. “He was- oh, gods.” His hands clench. “The fucking bastard-”

“What are you talking about?” Sansa asks.

They both ignore her.

“-he didn’t want to marry his son off, so he does _this-”_

“Don’t,” Jon warns. “Don’t go putting the blame on him, Robb, don’t you dare. He just showed me this. It was _you_ who went and-”

Robb laughs disbelievingly. “It was years ago! When Arya was still missing! When- when Sansa was married to Tyrion. I had no choice. Jon, you have to see that at least: there was nothing I could do.”

“You kicked her out of your will,” Jon snaps. “Sansa, Robb, _Sansa._ You went and fucking disinherited her from her Stark name. What the fuck were you thinking? Had a fever dream? Or-”

 _Seven hells,_ Sansa thinks. She wishes she knew something more vulgar, something to truly give voice to the emotion swelling in her chest.

“Jon,” she says, voice sharpening, aching. “Jon, please, sit down-”

Again, he ignores her. This is the first time in their marriage it’s happened, and Sansa’s not sure she likes it. But she’s also unsure of his response if she were to touch him- he’s wound that tight- so she forces herself not to react.

The thing is- _yes,_ if this were the first time she’d heard such a statement, Sansa would likely have been hurt by it. Disinheriting her was a cruel thing to do, a foolish thing to do. It’s not, though: Robb’s told her, confessed it, over breakfasts and between meetings, all the ways in which he’s failed her and all the things she’s had to accept, move past, to truly forgive him.

Sansa’s forgiven Robb his sins against her.

And now- she can see the outrage lining Jon’s shoulders, the defensive set of Robb’s. One more accusation; one more insult; and Sansa’s not surprised, not in the least, when Robb launches himself across the table and throws the first punch.

She hesitates at that- Sansa’s not entirely certain what a proper response would be. Her instinct is to call for guards; but if she does, before sundown the entire castle and half of the Riverlands will know that Jon fought with Robb- or, more importantly, that Jon Targaryen, nephew of Daenerys Targaryen, fought with King Robb Stark.

And this treaty- this treaty that’s readied, this treaty which needs only the monarchs’ seals- it will have to be modified, because each side will attempt to milk the situation for all its worth. Already it’s taken them more than ten weeks to draft this one, and nobody is content with the result; if they open it back up, they will likely remain here in Riverrun for the next three years.

So the guards are out.

Sansa knows better than to get involved herself, as well. Leaving aside the rebukes she’ll receive if she were to do that, she has little interest in getting bruised or punched by the two idiots.

Her eyes land on a pitcher beside her- a mug, large and solid, filled with the same wine she’d poured out for Robb and herself. A breath, and then two, and then three; Robb grunts, a low, horrible sound that’s punched out of him by Jon’s elbows, and it decides her.

The mug is heavy. Sansa hefts it in her arms, feeling the quiver of her muscles, and she lifts her head, watching Jon and Robb cautiously, carefully. They tumble closer to her when Robb shoves Jon, rolling against the carpet. Sansa steps forwards, breathes in; and then she throws the wine.

She mistimes it- just a little. Most of the wine lands on Robb rather than Jon, but the shock of the entire thing works quickly enough to startle them both into stillness.

_Good._

“You are both acting like _imbeciles,”_ Sansa announces, voice trembling. Indignation and fury meld in her stomach, hot and fierce. “Brawling, as if you were children- you are _not._ You are kings, princes, both of you. Kingdoms depend on you!”

Jon surges to his feet. “He put your life in danger. He disinherited you. How can you even consider- how can you so much as _think-_ of forgiving him?”

Sansa bites the inside of her cheek. “Because I wish to. Because he is my brother, and-”

“Knowingly,” Jon says, voice getting louder and louder- “he knowingly hurt you, and you don’t even think about it, you just choose to let it-”

There’s a loud scrape of a chair’s legs against flagstones as Robb levers himself to his feet, leaning against it. He has a bruise across the left side of his face, another spanning his right temple, a cut along the scar running over his jawline. Jon, startlingly, has few such bruises- only a faint mark on the bridge of his nose and a cut scraping his hairline.

“Did you think I _meant_ to hurt her?” Robb asks.

Jon stares at him for a long moment. Then he says, flatly, “I’m not sure I ever knew what you meant.”

Robb makes an aborted movement, as if to strike Jon once more, and Sansa drops the mug. It shatters on the table, so loud that both of them jump- and then she says, level and measured as a drawn blade: “Robb, I think you need to leave.”

 _“He-”_ he says, waving an arm at Jon.

Sansa doesn’t let him finish. “Head to your rooms,” she tells him. “Or- Mother’s. She’ll be in her chambers now. Ask her to look at your head.” A breath, shaky in her lungs. When she speaks, though, her voice doesn’t tremble at all. “Jon and I shall see you- later.”

She doesn’t wait for his response; only seizes her hand over Jon’s wrist and all but drags him out of the councilrooms. They meet few enough people on the way to their chambers- a blessing in all but name, for explaining the blood and the bruise would be all too much trouble.

Once inside, she releases his wrist and closes the door behind her, turning to meet his gaze.

“Sansa,” he says, quietly.

“You ought to sit down,” she tells him. “You’ve a cut on your forehead- it’s bleeding.”

“Sansa.”

_“Sit.”_

Jon does- on the edge of the bed, face tipped away from hers, eyes flicking down.

Sansa moves away, returning a moment later with a cup of heated water and a length of linen. His knuckles aren’t split, just badly bruised. When she realizes, she steps into the splay of his knees and reaches for his face instead. It must sting, for she can see the way the muscles in his forearm knot with the effort of not moving.

“It doesn’t matter to you?” He asks, when she remains silent. “That Robb was willing to disown you?”

“It… did. And if you’d been the one to tell me- if you’d been the one to tell me, and if you’d done it in the manner in which you did- I’d likely have been hurt.” Sansa quirks her lips at him. “Jon. Robb told me.”

Jon is silent for a long moment, jaw working. Then he asks, “When?”

“Weeks ago.”

“And you forgave that?”

“Yes.”

He tips his head towards her chest, then away, fast enough to name a flinch. “You shouldn’t have,” Jon tells her.

Sansa feels the bite of her teeth into the swell of her lip, sharp. She has a cutting reply there, on the tip of her tongue- but then she sees Jon, sees all of him. He looks smaller, now, shoulders curved inwards as a bird’s broken wings; and she thinks: _he did it for me._

He did it for her, striking the man he’d named brother and would’ve named king. Jon would’ve cut all ties with Robb if Sansa’d asked it of him, would’ve done it even if she’d not said a word, and that’s a sacrifice she’d never once imagined any man- no, _anyone-_  would’ve made for her.

She can’t quite keep the anger at the forefront of her mind, not anymore.

“Jon,” she says, gently, curling a hand under his jaw and tipping his head up. He looks so young- he _is_ so young, both of them have so much time ahead of them- heat flutters in her ribs at the thought like a thousand little birds’ wings, and she can’t stop the smile. “I’m not angry.”

“You should be,” he says, eyes unwavering. “At Robb, and how he’s treated you, and at _me,_ I ought to have known better than to brawl-”

He breaks off when she runs a finger over the bruises darkening his knuckles, inhaling raggedly.

“Yes,” Sansa murmurs. “You oughtn’t have done that. But it was still kind of you.”

She finishes dabbing at the cut- it’s shallow, such that it likely wouldn’t even scar. When she’s finished, Sansa considers moving away.

And yet- Jon hasn’t pushed her, not once in their entire marriage. He’s been gentle with her, always so gentle, and where once Sansa was certain of the world’s cruelty, now she cannot help but wonder if it truly is that way, or if she has simply been dealt an unfair amount of pain.

 _Perhaps the world is not cruel,_ she thinks, and lets her fingers trace the edges of a scar along Jon’s temple, _perhaps the world simply is, and all of its cruelty is matched by all of its love, and I have not known enough of both to compare._

 _Then,_ she thinks, _I must see this love._

She bends forwards, just a few inches closer than she’d been before, and feathers a kiss against the hollow right above Jon’s cheekbone.

 _Only to compare,_ Sansa thinks, lips curving upwards with amusement she can’t help but feel. This lie, at the least, holds no potential for cruelty in it.

Another kiss to the apple of his cheek, then the arc of Jon’s nose, on top of the bruise; and then she crosses over to the other side of his face. The kisses are chaste, still, only her lips against his soft skin. Jon, however, is perfectly motionless under her. Sansa drops the rag on the ground and reaches up, palm fitting against the slant of his jaw, thumb resting against the skin just beneath Jon’s ear.

He inhales, breath gone choppy again, as waves on beachsand. Slowly, Sansa draws him up to look at her, and heat flushes through her body at the sight: Jon’s eyes are dark; his curls askew; his face is lit up the exact shade of a rose’s petals, right before the bud unfurls.

They’ve kissed only once before: on their wedding altar, Sansa in Targaryen black and red, in the sept her father died inside, sunlight shining off the rubies surrounding them, half-blinding and hazy.

That kiss was for their families and their realms.

This one is for themselves.

Sansa’s mouth angles over Jon’s, lips gentle against his; it’s scarce a moment before Jon makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat that leaves her peculiarly warm and straightens, back and neck extending to deepen the kiss. She gasps and flinches further into it, the cup she’d been holding dropping to the ground, spilling water all over her skirts, her other hand coming up and tangling in Jon’s hair.

He drags her closer a heartbeat later, hand large and warm along her spine. She stumbles at the abrupt movement and catches herself on one of his thighs. There’s a half-formed thought in her head that the fullness of her skirts is enough to ensure neither of them can feel overmuch of each other’s body, but the closeness only serves to inflame them further; and, after that, Sansa can’t quite think, not for long, hot minutes, the world reduced to Jon’s hands and hair and skin-

She’s certainly addled when Jon speaks next, his voice a rasp that leaves her insides alight.

“Sansa,” he says, fingers tightening on the curve of her waist. “Sansa, _Sansa-”_

“What,” she breathes back, lungs half-emptied of air and dizzy with sudden, all-consuming greed. “What, Jon, what-”

She means to say, _what could possibly be so important?-_ but Jon’s hands are banded around her, and suddenly, they’re not so much drawing her further into him than they are keeping her away, and she draws the energy to meet his gaze.

“Listen to me, sweetling,” he says, almost a chant, almost mindless, “please, Sansa, please.”

It takes an immense amount of effort for her to pull away, but Sansa manages. She’s still breathless, though; her blood feels like melted stone in her veins, slow and thick and far too hot for comfort.

“What is it?”

One of her hands is tight on the hinge of Jon’s jaw, feeling the vibrations whenever he speaks; the other in his hair, running through the curls. It’s springy, cool, softer than she’d ever expect any part of Jon’s body to be, as war-hardened as it is. His eyes shutter at the scrape of her nails along the side of his neck. Sansa tries it again, experimenting, and the tremble of Jon’s shoulders makes her stomach swoop.

“You ought to leave,” Jon tells her, lowly. “I cannot- I am not-” he exhales, head pitching forward a half-inch, before he controls himself. “This is not something you wish, and I am not in control of myself, Sansa, not in the least.”

His fingers flex along her waist, though, belying the weight of his words- Sansa inhales, exhales, and wonders when, exactly, she went mad enough to love Jon. It’s snuck up on her, at the least, like a sunrise: one moment the sky is dark, and the next there is light, and that moment between the two is unidentifiable. That line, she thinks now, Jon’s blood smeared over the edges of her gown, his warmth and solidness in her arms- that line is not clear, and likely never will be; but Sansa yet loves him as deep as her mother ever loved her father, as abiding as the sea’s waves and the wind’s chill.

She nods, however, and gets up, moving to the door. There’s a sound behind her- half a groan, half something too low for her to name- but Sansa doesn’t turn around. She’s not certain what her response would be, and that frightens her more than Jon ever could; she could run, she could stay, she could frighten _him_ with the depth of her desire- the possibilities are endless, and Sansa must do this slowly, carefully, as she would a dance that she knows the steps of but must perform in the dark- with caution, albeit tempered with boldness.

At the door, Sansa hesitates. If she leaves now, things will be left as they’ve been for the past months between each other. It matters little; she knows Jon won’t hold her absence against her.

But there is something in the warmth of his bones- something that leaves her unsettled and, somehow, simultaneously, eager.

Her hand hovers over the latch for less than a heartbeat. The click of its fall is quiet enough that Jon doesn’t hear. When she turns around, Sansa pauses at the sight before her: Jon’s arms are thrown over his face, haphazardly, and his torso lies flat on the bed while his legs dangle off.

It’s patently undignified, Sansa’s sure of it- a child’s position, of a boy bemoaning their lot in life; not the man Jon’s grown to become. But it’s also endearing beyond all belief to think that he’d curse himself for sending her away. That Jon would think of her desires at all is different from what Sansa’s experienced of men, but that he’d do so against all of his own is more potent than she could have imagined.

When she steps closer, soundless, Sansa realizes one more thing: Jon doesn’t know that she is there.

It’s three long strides from the door to his bed- to _their_ bed- and Sansa covers them swiftly, fast enough that Jon scarce has the time to realize her presence. His eyes are wide and stunned as she knots her hands in his jerkin and draws him upright.

“These are my rooms,” she tells him, fingers itching to touch more skin, to map all of him with everything she has, fingers and teeth and tongue. She’s not sure what she’s saying, not really, untamed want searing through her and stealing all of her mind, but the words tumble out anyhow. “And if you ever again presume to tell me what I wish and what I do not wish, I will- I will shred all your shirts, Jon Snow, don’t you think I won’t.”

He makes an unintelligible sound, one that sounds almost like a laugh- a laugh she swallows, mouth pressed against his with sudden, bruising force.

“Sansa,” he gasps, again, pulling away, and Sansa pants out, impatient, _“What?”_

Jon breathes for a moment, but his eyes catch on her lips, the shadow of her collarbone; his hand fits against her waist with the ease of an action done a thousand times, and then he reaches up, tracing over the curve of her jaw carefully, slowly.

“You want this,” he says.

 _“Yes,”_ Sansa says, lips still stinging, heart still pounding, half-mad with the ache pooling between her legs and through her belly. “Yes, Jon, I do.”

_Gods strike me down if I know why, but I do._

“Gods,” he groans, then, heartfelt, and the hand resting over her jaw seizes over the point of her chin and drags her down.

He’s not exactly skilled, Sansa thinks; not in the way that Petyr had been, not in the way Joffrey had been. But the desperation in him fuels her own. And the care with which he touches her is a thousand times more devastating than any of Joffrey’s kisses, even at the height of her love of him.

Jon’s hands are large, blazing through the layers she wears, bracing and brazen all at once. When one of his thumbs strums over her nipple- lightly, hesitantly- Sansa gasps, back arching against him.

“Do that,” she manages to gasp out. “Do that again.”

His eyes narrow on hers, almost thoughtful. Everything about him stills, as a sky in the breath before thunder, and then he does- his thumb moving the barest amount over her nipple, soft and teasing and infuriatingly _good,_ all at once.

“Yes?” He asks, voice a rumble that she can feel through her bones.

Sansa’s never heard it quite like that, not precisely, but she can imagine him on a training field easily enough- Jon, clad in half-armor, hair damp, cheeks flushed as he shouts in this roughened voice- and it melts something inside of her, makes her knees wobble as if she’d just disembarked from a two-month long sea voyage, makes her as giggly-drunk as she’d ever been with Joffrey.

For the first time in a long time, that elation doesn’t make her feel foolish.

“Yes,” Sansa whispers, cheeks heating. At her own daring, or the desire, or the lightness that’s making her feel as if she were strung atop clouds- she’s not quite sure, but she rather suspects it’s a mixture of all three.

It’s that same daring, that same drunken feeling, that drives her to twist away from him. It’s a half-heartbeat, separating just enough to give her space to reach her spine; but Jon makes a low-throated noise anyhow at the lack of closeness. She doesn’t pause, doesn’t let herself think on it overmuch, just embraces the sensation of drowning. And then she swipes at the laces holding the back of her dress together until it comes loose.

Jon’s eyes go gratifyingly wide when he realizes what she’s doing.

“I-” he hesitates to say the next words, mouth rounding into the syllables but not letting them pass his lips. When she only waits, though, he abandons the idea of speaking at all; he reaches, instead, for her, before pausing and yanking at his own jerkin.

When next they kiss, it’s so much better: Sansa’s arms are free to feel his, his thumbs are hot on her chest, and though they’re both fully dressed by any stretch of the word, the whole thing feels illicit and as wanton as anything she’s ever imagined in the dead of night.

Then Jon lifts his shirt over his head, tearing the neck-hole through half of it in the process. Sansa pauses for just a moment- she’s on his lap, their legs tangled together, the evening light paints Jon’s body in shades of red-gold, and he’s _lovely,_ skin tawny and worthy of appreciation- but then her eyes drift shut and she stretches against him, skin sliding on silk. He hisses out through his teeth.

“Gods,” he says, biting at her ear, kissing at the same mark almost immediately after. His hands trip over her chest, toying with the laces holding her shift together. _“Gods,”_ he says, again, fervid and trembling.

“I,” Sansa breathes, “I-” then, breathless: _“Jon.”_

She’s not quite sure what happens next- not entirely. But she knows that Jon shudders at his name, knows that his muscles twitch; in the same moment, the convulsive movement pulls at her laces enough to make the entire thing fall apart.

Sansa feels herself freeze.

Jon’s throat works, eyes skittering over the bared skin haplessly, before he lifts his head to her. Whatever he sees on her face- panic, she thinks, is written quite clearly across it- it stills him; his fingers pinch the silk together and he says, “We can stop.”

 _Perhaps,_ Sansa thinks, and then: _husband._ Jon is her husband, her lawful husband, a man everyone in all the kingdoms thinks has already bedded her- but all he’s done is hold her for all those nights. He’s extended trust as if it were made of the most delicately spun gold, and he’s waited for her to take it back.

It’s not desire that floods her now; it’s affection.

“Yes,” she says, softly, and rubs her fingers through his hair, nails scritching across his scalp. “But we shan’t.”

And, rather unceremoniously, she draws her shoulders tight to shrug the shift off.

The smallclothes under hide barely anything, and it’s the work of scarce a moment to undo the thread holding that together as well. Sansa feels so daring, so wild and free, like she’s in a dance- like she’s leaping into midair and trusting, entirely, that her partner will catch her- and she’s in love with it all, that’s the short and long of it: in love with Jon, in love with this breathlessness, in love with this room and the sunset and the way it’s _perfect,_ shining and golden and aching. Sansa can’t breathe, really, not properly, not with the depth of her joy.

“You’re lovely,” Jon tells her, callused fingers rubbing over the skin along her shoulders, thumb skimming the skin right above the rise of her breasts. If he reached, just a little-

Sansa can feel the heat of her blush at the thought. She can also feel the heat of her desire, and it’s the swell of both that makes her lean forwards, makes her twine her arms around his neck and throw herself forwards until her face is buried in his neck.

“So- so’re you,” she gasps, face blushing redder than a hearthfire’s embers. “Jon, this is-” 

Her voice breaks off when he leans down, licks a hot stripe from her neck down to her breast and then, after shifting her from his lap to the bed, moves lower.

“Lovely,” says Jon, hands against her thighs, skimming over the back of her calves, breath warm against the juncture of her legs; and his voice- his voice is soft as a kitten’s fur, soft as her silk dresses. “Gorgeous girl, sweetling, you’re lovelier than any woman I’ve ever seen.”

There’s a flare of warmth in her belly at the thought, but Jon’s not touching her, not entirely, so she finds the presence of mind to speak. “Oh, yes,” she says, voice steadier than she’d expected; her hands dig into his shoulders, bracing herself. “Because you’ve seen so many women, Jon.”

His eyes meet hers. And _oh,_ that’s a sight indeed: eyes storm-dark, skin bronzed from fading sunlight, hair haloed with the same rays. Jon’s framed by her pale thighs and Sansa’s certain that if she perished then and there, she’d die a woman satisfied.

“Maybe not, but I’m certain none of them are as beautiful as you.”

There’s a smile there, in the corners of his mouth, in the creases of his eyes, and Sansa wants to see it properly. She tosses her head and feels the braids slip, tumbling down her back.

“Well, I’m certain no man I could’ve wanted would’ve been as lovely as you,” she returns. Then Sansa’s reaching forwards, pressing her fingers to that face: thumb at the corner of his eyes, palm soft against the bristle of his beard. “My own dragon-prince, lord protector.” Her other hand prods the side of his shoulder, running over the divots of muscle. “You’ve grown into yourself, you know, better than Joffrey, or Robb, or- anyone.”

His cheeks are brighter than they’d been a moment earlier. “You always loved Joffrey,” he says, quietly. It’s a disagreement, but Sansa thinks there’s something of hope in the shine of his eyes. Something that blazes through her skin until she feels incandescent. “Or- men like Joffrey.”

Jon’s seen her scars. He’s seen them for weeks now, for months. Sansa reaches forwards and circles his wrist with her fingers, before lifting them to her ribs, to the lone scar that reaches around to her front.

“Always is a long time, Jon,” she says, almost soundless. She’s changed; both of them have changed. Grown, in some aspects. Ached in others. But they’re different, and if it is that difference that means Sansa can appreciate the man before her, then she’ll welcome it. “I’ve sworn only one vow forever, and it’s one I plan to keep.”

A breath, and then two, and then three; and then: Jon lunges up, catches her lips with his own, and kisses her like he hasn’t the air to breathe.

One vow: to love Jon, to be his wife, forever and more.

Sansa drowns in it. He’s lost himself, she realizes, lost himself in her declaration. It’s as close she can come to stating her love for him- that’s still too young, too fragile, for her to state- but her statement seemed quite enough to drive what few controls he’s set for himself awry. His hands, his lips; _gods,_ but the proximity of his body is quite enough to leave her gasping and boneless. With all three together, she feels like she might never again be able to speak a proper sentence.

She can feel him, hard against her stomach, one hand digging into her waist, the other propping himself up to hover over her. Jon tastes of apples, she realizes, then, as she’s licking into his mouth; apples and butter and something else, something sweet and thick and hot, all at once.

“Let me try this,” Jon says, so gently Sansa might well have missed what he said if not for the curl of tension that further ribboned through her lower stomach.

His fingers rest, lightly, at the juncture of her legs. They’re crooked, just a little, and Sansa feels the old fear unfurl inside of her at the sight. What they’ve done thus far has been lovelier than she’d ever expected; perhaps this is the start of the unpleasantness.

“You’ll like it,” Jon tells her, and leans forwards, kissing her with the same fervor as before, so deeply she feels like to choke on all the tenderness in it. “Sansa, sweetling-”

“I,” she says, before softening. “Yes. Yes- I can- _yes.”_

No more words, not until she’s mastered control of herself.

Or so Sansa thinks. A heartbeat later, when Jon’s fingers press against her, swirl in the wetness gathering at her core, tap at the parts of her she’s never before explored- Sansa can’t control herself, can’t maintain anything of restraint, not over her voice, not over her body, not over her thoughts.

“Oh,” she’s saying, between high gasps and a staccato wash of meaningless syllables, _“oh,_ Jon, that’s- that’s- _oh-”_

And then Sansa feels his tongue, curling against that same flesh, and she is weightless. Slippery, over-large for her own skin. She gasps, aches, bucks her hips because she cannot stay still, not for one more breath, not for one more heartbeat. Jon only bends closer, flicks his tongue faster; Sansa keens, loudly, and feels the world spin out of her reach.

She’s still shaking from the effects of that when Jon slides back over her.

“How was it?”

“‘m not sure,” Sansa replies, turning to face him. His eyes are heavy-lidded; there’s a shine to his lips and a gleam to his beard, and she realizes, abruptly, that it’s all because of _her._ Her stomach- her body, really, which she’d thought utterly satisfied- jumps at the thought. She bites her lip. “It felt- amazing.” Exquisite, and new, and lovely. Better than anything she’d ever imagined. Jon’s lips curve at that, and Sansa offers him a smile back- but then she realizes that, as much as he’s touched her, she’s not done anything of the sort for him. “I- I don’t-” she inhales, fast and sharp, and then leans forward to catch his hand. “Is that it, then?”

He blinks at her. “What do you mean?”

“I _mean-_ did you feel that way? Like I did?”

“You mean-” Jon’s brow clears. “Did I peak? Is that what you’re asking?”

“Whatever it’s called-” Sansa waves that away as if it were a particularly irritating gnat; she’s got more important things on her mind, “-I’m sure you didn’t. Feel it.”

“I,” Jon says, and sounds half-mystified; half-suspicious. “No, I suppose I didn’t.”

“Well, then, tell me what to do.”

He twitches. “I can’t just- _no,_ Sansa, that’s not how- _gods.”_

“What?” Sansa sits up as he does, lifting an eyebrow. “I assumed that this was all to- do it. You know. So we could get to the… less enjoyable part.”

“I’ve lost you,” Jon tells her. “What should we do? What- _part?”_

Sansa’s blushing. She knows, she _knows,_ how ridiculous this is. Jon’s had his hands on every part of her body, had his fingers inside of her. But the only words she knows to describe this act are euphemisms, and if she ever gives a voice to them, Sansa’s certain that Jon will die of a punctured lung- either from laughing so hard, or because she’ll pummel him to death.

So she makes a sort of gesture with her hand.

 _“That,”_ she says, and it’s awkward, and it’s tensed, and she sees the exact moment Jon realizes what she’s referring to.

“Oh,” Jon says, eyes wide and rounded as coins. “I- _Sansa._ I didn’t do that so you could- _hells.”_ He exhales and drops his hand over her waist. “It’s not going to be less enjoyable. Not for either of us.” He snakes the other hand up, tips her chin to look straight into his eyes. “I promise. Always.”

“Everyone says it’ll hurt,” Sansa tells him.

“Yes, well, fuck them.” Laughter reverberates through his chest as he gathers her close. “They also told me I was your father’s bastard when everyone called him the most honorable man in the Seven Kingdoms. They also called you a traitor, when you’re one of the most loyal people I know.”

Jon smiles, then, and it’s that smile- the one she’d wanted to see before, all bright, and brilliant, and shining as a star.

“So if they don’t know anything, and you don’t know anything, and _I_ don’t know anything-”

“I’m certain I know some things,” Jon interrupts, brows waggling.

Sansa catches the laughter, stuffs it back inside, feels the swell of love and affection and trust in her chest.

“-then I suppose we’ll just have to fumble our way through,” she finishes.

“Fairly certain I didn’t fumble,” he tells her.

“Well, you’ll have to tell me what to do,” Sansa replies tartly. “Seeing as I’ll certainly fumble.”

Jon pauses. He shifts, then, slightly, and she feels it- the hardness, that had been against her belly; it’s now against his, pressed between her side and his stomach. It’s flushed a delicate pink, the same shade of his ears when she embarrasses him, and Sansa can’t quite dampen her smile, not anymore.

“It’s- you just-” Jon exhales, and then, reaching down, he dips his fingers between her legs once more. Sansa almost flinches- almost- before relaxing into him. “Lie back,” he says, voice roughening as if she’s taken sandpaper to it. “You’re still so wet, Sansa.”

“Good?” She asks, stretching out against the covers.

“Good,” he replies, the corner of his mouth kicking up again, that same look he’d directed at her after their dance, the one that made her feel like butter left out in the sun. “It’ll be good. Now… just-”

Whatever else he meant to say, it’s lost in a wash of breath as he enters her.

And that’s- that’s painful. Sansa won’t pretend otherwise; _can’t_ pretend otherwise. But it’s an ache that she can bear, one that feels more like her thighs had felt after racing with Arya in the godswood; an ache that promises something good. And then Jon starts to move, his mouth rounding soundlessly, and all Sansa can feel is a pleasure cresting in her toes, her nails, her belly.

It’s not as all-consuming as when he’d had his mouth on her. But it shivers through her, this feeling: Jon’s weight, his warmth, the slide of his body against hers. It feels like a proper dance, truly, more than anything- one that’s been danced for eons; made of instinct rather than instruction, and all the lovelier for it.

“Sweet girl,” he whispers, then, stilling for a moment; whispers into the hollow of her ear, into the base of her neck, into the curve of her cheek- “Darling wife, lovely woman-”

A hundred endearments, each kinder than the next, each stated in the same voice that leaves her helpless and aching and _wanting,_ above all.

Sansa shifts her hips, arcing against him, and that’s- that’s even _better,_ somehow, so she does it again, and again. Jon seems to like it too, so she loops her arms over his shoulders, snakes a foot over the back of his thigh, and the next roll of her hips makes him jerk as if she’s stuck him with the flat of a chilled dagger, makes her eyes flutter shut with all the sensation.

The feeling grows, expands, blooming from the pit of her stomach to the tip of her throat, to the roots of her hair. She can see the blush on Jon’s chest, the sweat beading over his brow; Sansa gasps, again, and reaches out to roll her fingers through his hair.

“You’re lovely,” she tells him, between the moans caught in her throat. He huffs out a laugh that seems half-punched out of his chest. “Oh, Jon, you _are,_ like a- like a- like a home, you know, like Winterfell.”

“I’m a castle, now?” He grunts, and Sansa giggles, arches, slants her mouth over his and tastes sweet apples once more.

“A home,” she says, then, so close to him her lips brush his when she moves them. “A home I’ve wanted for years. Lovelier than Winterfell. Or the North, or anything.”

Jon pulls away, just a little. The look in his eyes now makes her blush, turn red- there’s no need to tell him she loves him, she thinks; for surely he must _know,_ surely Jon must know how dearly she’s loved the North and Winterfell, surely he must know that naming him lovelier than even that is as close as she can come to stating her love of him.

“Oh,” he says, so softly, so gently, that Sansa’s _sure_ he knows, now, the full breadth of her feeling for him. “Oh, Sansa.”

He kisses her again, and the heat in her belly spreads, intensifies, until he rubs his finger over her, right above where they’re joined; and then Sansa’s flying again, floating, peaking, as Jon had named it. When she comes back down, he’s still pumping into her- but it’s only four more, and then a series of quivering jerks, until Jon, too, slumps over.

“That was-” he turns and looks at her, lips pressed into a genuine smile. “Wonderful.”

“Yes,” says Sansa, reaching forwards, looping her arm around his neck, curling around him. “Yes, Jon, it was.”

**Author's Note:**

> Both chapter and fic titles come from "Tarnished Silver," by Heather Dale.


End file.
